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cailianshe news, september 23 (editor: zhou ziyi)middle eastern capital is pouring into artificial intelligence startups at an accelerated pace, becoming a key supporter of some of the "silicon valley darlings."

gulf states such as saudi arabia, the united arab emirates, kuwait and qatar have been seeking ways to diversify their economies in recent years and have used technology investments as a hedge.

data from pitchbook shows that middle eastern sovereign wealth funds have increased their investments in artificial intelligence companies fivefold over the past year.

more money pouring in

these sovereign funds of the gulf countries invest overseas on behalf of their governments and provide support for ai-related fundraising. according to goldman sachs, by 2026, the total wealth of the gulf cooperation council (gcc) member states is expected to increase from us$2.7 trillion to us$3.5 trillion, mainly due to the rise in energy prices in recent years.

data shows that the size of saudi arabia's public investment fund (pif) has exceeded $925 billion. as part of the "vision 2030" initiative proposed by saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman, pif has been investing heavily in recent years.

in addition, the uae's mubadala investment company manages us$302 billion, the abu dhabi investment authority (adia) manages us$1 trillion; the qatar investment authority (qia) has a scale of us$475 billion; and the kuwait investment authority (kia)'s fund size has exceeded us$800 billion.

the united arab emirates’ mubadala has invested in openai competitor anthropic and has made eight ai deals in the past four years, according to pitchbook data.

the uae’s newly launched mgx ai fund in march joins a collaboration with blackrock, microsoft and global infrastructure partners on ai infrastructure, aiming to raise up to $100 billion for data center and other infrastructure investments.

mgx also wants a piece of openai’s latest funding round, which values ​​the company at $150 billion, two sources familiar with the matter said recently.

saudi arabia’s pif is in talks to form a $40 billion partnership with u.s. venture capital firm andreessen horowitz. the fund has also set up a dedicated ai fund, called the saudi corporation for artificial intelligence, or scai.

it’s not just the gulf states that are pouring money into ai. french sovereign fund bpifrance has signed 161 ai and machine learning deals in the past four years, while singapore’s temasek has done 47 deals, and gic, another sovereign backed by the singapore government, has done 24, according to pitchbook.