Gulf

1. KKR’s Gulf data-center play
2. Trump 2.0 for Saudi
3. Qatar’s affordable homes bet
4. Riyadh Air delay
5. Kuwait vice tax
6. Stock advice for 2025

Qatar’s top sport: marathon negotiations.

KKR, Gulf Data Hub to invest $5 billion

KKR is investing in one of the region’s biggest data center firms, the latest deal demonstrating the Gulf’s draw as a global digital infrastructure hub. Financial details weren’t disclosed: The US asset manager and its partner Gulf Data Hub said they were committed to investing more than $5 billion to expand data center capacity. GDH operates seven facilities in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and plans to expand to Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar.

With ample energy, capital, and land, the Gulf is becoming a hub in the race to develop the world’s most advanced AI models. In April, Microsoft made a $1.5 billion investment in Abu Dhabi’s G42, seeing the company as a conduit to expand its Azure data center business. Google Cloud and Saudi’s Public Investment Fund agreed in October to develop an AI hub in Dammam.

Investments are also flowing abroad: DAMAC plans to invest $20 billion in US data centers, while G42 has built up four times the computing capacity in the US compared to at home in the UAE.

Trump-Saudi scenarios

As Donald Trump returns to the White House, Saudi Arabia is aiming to redefine its ties to the US and position itself as a rising Middle Power. The kingdom’s crown prince enjoys close relations to Trump, and his economic diversification plan presents opportunities for US companies, AGBI reported. Sovereign wealth fund investments into America may also feature, but Saudi has relatively less fire power compared to its Gulf peers as its Public Investment Fund prioritizes domestic development. In geopolitics, the highest-profile potential achievement for Trump would be Saudi-Israel normalization, a considerable challenge that may become feasible if the ceasefire in Gaza turns into a durable peace process.

Qatar bets on affordable housing

Gulf real estate investments usually revolve around prime properties in cosmopolitan cities, but Qatar’s latest deals are a bit downmarket. The Qatar Investment Authority, Doha’s sovereign wealth fund, has joined private equity firm Warburg Pincus and other investors to buy a $141 million stake in Indian affordable housing specialist Truhome Finance. And Qilaa International Group (another Qatari investor with links to the ruling Al-Thani family) agreed to build 1 million affordable homes in Indonesia, with housing minister Maruarar Sirait saying that city-dwelling lower-middle-class locals would benefit.

Affordable housing is a priority for many governments, but securing foreign financing can be challenging. Some governments have been offering incentives such as land grants and tax benefits to boost profitability, and these types of projects are often substantial enough to attract the large-scale investments that sovereign wealth funds would have historically deployed in a luxury skyscraper.

Riyadh Air setback after Boeing delay

Riyadh Air — the kingdom’s rival to Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways — faces a setback in its launch plans because of delivery delays from Boeing. The airline expected eight 787 Dreamliner widebody jets in 2025, Bloomberg reported, but will now receive only four at best. This has pushed back its inaugural flight to the third quarter of 2025 instead of the originally planned early-year launch. When Riyadh Air does take off, it will benefit from improved regional airspace access: With aviation routes reopening over Syria and expanded connectivity between the UAE and Israel following the ceasefire in Gaza, the carrier may enjoy a rare period free of active wars, if the peace holds.

Kuwait plans a ‘vice tax’

The amount the Kuwaiti government hopes to raise from a new “vice tax.” Finance Minister Nora Al-Fassam said her department is drawing up plans for the levy on commodities harmful to human health, but has not yet said exactly what might be affected. Other Gulf countries have introduced “sin taxes” in the past, on things like alcohol, pork products, tobacco, and sugary drinks — but alcohol and pork are already illegal in Kuwait, so they aren’t an option for the authorities. It comes as part of a wider effort to reform the government’s revenue base, which currently relies almost exclusively on oil income. Higher corporate taxes are also on the cards.

Standard Chartered: Buy US stocks, again

The top investment picks for 2025 mirror a familiar theme from 2024: buy US stocks and gold. That’s according to Manpreet Singh Gill, Standard Chartered’s chief investment officer for Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, who said that American stocks were poised for high earnings growth this year. While valuations are above historical averages, they still have room to expand, Gill said in a briefing in Dubai. As for the Gulf, Standard Chartered sees the region’s focus on economic transformation as a key factor shielding it “from many global economic challenges,” helping boost private-sector growth. But regional stock markets remain closely tied to oil prices, Gill said, reducing their appeal. The bank expects oil prices to average $65 to $70 per barrel in 2025 — West Texas Intermediate traded at $77 per barrel on Monday.

Energy Transition

• ADNOC Gas and Baker Hughes deployed technology at a gas processing plant that captures carbon and transforms it into 1 million tons per year of graphene, which is used to make electric vehicles and solar panels. The system, from UK climate tech firm Levidian, will also produce a similar quantity of hydrogen.

Mining

• Aramco and Saudi’s Ma’aden agreed to form a mining partnership to extract lithium. Operations could begin in 2027 and the companies expect to meet domestic demand for the metal, supporting the manufacturing of 500,000 electric-vehicle batteries and 110 gigawatts of renewable power.

Space

• The UAE’s space sector achieved a milestone with the successful launch of its homebuilt MBZ-Sat into orbit. The 750-kilogram satellite, delivered aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, can capture detailed images of objects as small as one square meter on Earth.

It isn’t a sport, but multi-year negotiations demand extraordinary endurance. Over two decades, Qatari diplomats have found themselves at the heart of seemingly intractable conflicts. The reporting surrounding the latest ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas explores the grueling reality of such efforts: late nights, political crossfire, and embarrassing last-minute twists. The final deal closely resembled earlier drafts, but as The New York Times reported, its success was in doubt just two weeks ago. “We were negotiating word by word, sentence by sentence and formula by formula,” said Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, a minister of state in the Qatari foreign ministry. “It becomes exhausting mentally and physically.”

The key Washington lobbying group for news organizations and publishers is gearing up for legal action against a major artificial intelligence company that it believes has been egregiously copying publisher content to power its large language model, Semafor’s Max Tani scooped.

Proponents of the move said that the current ambiguity of laws around copyright infringement by AI necessitates legal action by news publishers who feel that many LLMs have been trained on their work without any (or adequate) compensation.