Gulf

1. Abu Dhabi’s US energy bet
2. Oilfield AI firm to expand
3. Dubai’s real estate tokens
4. Riyadh office space surge
5. China’s renewables push

The world’s most expensive drone shows.

Abu Dhabi partners in $25B US AI fund

Abu Dhabi continued its relentless global artificial intelligence investment spree, with a deal signed during UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed’s visit to Washington. Its latest move — a $25 billion partnership between sovereign wealth fund ADQ, which Sheikh Tahnoon chairs, and US firm Energy Capital Partners — will build 25 GW of power generation and infrastructure in the US to serve data centers, hyperscalers, and other energy-intensive industries.

Global electricity demand is expected to rise by 70% over the next decade, and AI is a big driver. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told thousands of fans at the company’s annual conference Tuesday that the appetite for the technology is only growing, and the limiting factor is the raw power needed to run gargantuan data centers.

The UAE has announced major commitments this year. Last month, it agreed to build a data center in Italy and pledged $50 billion in France’s AI sector. Through MGX — backed by Mubadala and G42 — Abu Dhabi is also participating with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank in the $500 billion Stargate project announced by US President Donald Trump in January.

Abu Dhabi to license AI for oilfields

Abu Dhabi’s AIQ plans to sell artificial intelligence technology it developed for UAE oilfields to other resource-rich nations. The company, backed by ADNOC and a unit of AI firm G42, is exploring deals in Albania, Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Kazakhstan, and Paraguay, a senior AIQ executive told Semafor. AIQ has developed software and hardware that ADNOC says has helped reduce downtime at drilling sites through predictive maintenance and increased productivity, cutting project timelines from weeks down to a matter of hours. ADNOC has opened up its archives to AIQ, sharing over 50 years’ worth of data to tailor AI models, and it awarded the company a $340 million deal to deploy the technology across all of its oilfields.

Dubai’s property, now on blockchain

The percentage of total real estate transactions Dubai aims to complete through digital tokens by 2033. The emirate’s housing authority is piloting a real estate tokenization project to further boost investment in one of the world’s hottest markets, allowing properties to be divvied up into digital tokens — or shares — recorded on a blockchain. The initiative will streamline the process of buying and selling, according to the Dubai Land Department. The city’s home prices have surged in the last five years, up 20% in 2024, and are expected to rise again this year, according to property consultancy Knight Frank.

Riyadh office space is catching up to Dubai

Riyadh is quickly catching up to Dubai in available office space, adding the most leasable area of any Middle Eastern city last year. The Saudi capital has long trailed Dubai, according to property consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle, but it’s building much faster than its regional rival, with plans to add 889,000 square meters in 2025, seven times the area currently in Dubai’s pipeline. Urgency is certainly being felt, with a chronic shortage of prime commercial property “and strong competition from liquid local institutional market participants” in Saudi Arabia’s biggest city shutting out foreign investors, according to JLL.

Saudi is a big buyer of China’s green tech

China’s global infrastructure push is being driven by green tech — and Saudi Arabia is one of its top markets. Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam and could see “substantial growth” in wind and solar projects over the next decade, according to Wood Mackenzie analysts. Saudi Arabia is set to have the greatest demand, with 41 GW of solar and 13 GW of wind power currently planned.

It would be easy to frame this trajectory geopolitically: China’s dominance over the hardware needed for the global energy transition gives it an advantage over the US, even as Washington pulls back on its trade and climate commitments under President Donald Trump.

Yet its core is more prosaic. Chinese companies’ global footprints reflect the industrial landscape inside China. As the “new three” — solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles — have become a growth engine, those sectors also received the most attention under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Law & Order

• A new police unit in Saudi Arabia is cracking down on “immoral acts,” arresting dozens of suspects accused of prostitution and of forcing women and children to beg on the streets. The squad brings back memories of the disbanded Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, notorious for its harsh enforcement of religious laws. Still, many Saudis have welcomed the renewed enforcement following a rise in such violations. — Financial Times

Sovereign debt

• Kuwait plans to return to international debt markets after an eight-year absence caused by political deadlock in its parliament, which was suspended for four years in May. The country reportedly intends to pass a law that would allow it to borrow up to 30 billion dinars ($97 billion) over the next 50 years. — Bloomberg

Mining

• Saudi Arabia awarded licenses for two sites — covering 4,788 square kilometers north of Jeddah and in the south of the kingdom — to local miners and companies from India and China. Riyadh aims to accelerate the exploration of its mineral resources, which it estimates to be worth more than $2 trillion. — AGBI

Grand finale or just another Thursday? More and more events in the UAE are capping off proceedings with major drone displays. Companies that specialize in the aerial pageantry are putting on multiple performances a week, turning around designs for events like the film premiere of Wicked at the Burj Khalifa, major events like ADIPEC, and the Dubai World Cup for horse racing.

An average show in the region costs about $112,250 — much more expensive than an old-fashioned fireworks display — and has 401 drones, Rest of World reports. More people are getting their pilot’s license and new companies are cropping up: Dubai has seen a 76% increase in registered drone pilots, a 53% growth in firms, and a 75% surge since 2023 in commercial drone activities, according to government figures.

Microsoft is getting more tactical with its spending on artificial intelligence.

The tech giant chose not to exercise a nearly $12 billion option to buy more data-center capacity from CoreWeave, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami and Liz Hoffman reported, a sign of big tech companies beginning to right-size their AI budgets.

Still, CoreWeave, which is readying for the year’s most closely watched IPO, quickly found another buyer in OpenAI, and Microsoft has reiterated its plan to spend $80 billion on AI.