About half of the world’s wealth fund investments belong to the Gulf countries

The seven funds are the Saudi PIF, the Qatar Investment Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and the four Emirates: ADIA, ADQ, ICD and Mubadala. Two of them have Israeli connections: ADQ aspired to acquire control of the Phoenix Group, a move that was canceled in 2022, and about a year ago it purchased a minority stake in the auction house Sotheby’s, whose controlling owner is the Israeli-French businessman Patrick Dehri (owner of Hot and i24news). At the same time, Mubadala owns 11% of the “Tamar” gas reservoir.

A transformation at the top of the investment from the Gulf

The total investments of these seven funds last year amounted to 126 billion dollars, 43% of all the investments of wealth funds in the world – a jump of 46% compared to 2024. According to the report, Mubadala ranked second among the Gulf states in 2025, with investments amounting to 32.6 billion dollars. It lost first place to the Saudi PIF ($36.2 billion) – a turnaround that occurred following the decision of the Saudis to purchase the American gaming giant EA for $28.8 billion (out of a total transaction in September of $55 billion). However, Mubadala was the most active of all in the world, with more than 40 transactions.

Another fund that presented a considerable investment is the Qatari one, which reached sixth place in the world with 16.6 billion dollars. It left behind the other emirates, ADIA ($12.9 billion, seventh place in the world), and ADQ ($10.9 billion, tenth place), with the Kuwaitis reaching 13th place in the world “only”, with $6.5 billion.

In a prominent report, a jump in investments by state entities in assets in America: the total capital that foreign funds poured into the US last year amounted to $131.8 billion, a growth of approximately 48% in relation to 2024. For the sake of comparison, investments in China fell by approximately 58% to $4.3 billion. At the same time, the total assets across the United States held by state investment entities amount to About 13.2 trillion dollars, followed by China ($8.2 trillion) in second place and the United Arab Emirates ($2.9 trillion) in third place.

15 billion dollars flowed into artificial intelligence

Among the areas that interest the world’s wealth funds in 2025, artificial intelligence attracted about 15 billion dollars. This connects to international governmental trends in the world, as reflected, for example, in the recent meeting between US President Donald Trump and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. Both agreed, among other things, to provide civil nuclear energy technologies to Riyadh, which aspires to transform itself into a global center of artificial intelligence – and for this, a lot of energy is required.

Despite that deal, Global SWF points out that the engine behind the investments in digitization in general and artificial intelligence in particular sits in the United Arab Emirates, with Mubadala. The Emirati fund invested $12.9 billion in digitization projects, of which about $4.9 billion in artificial intelligence in particular.

Also intriguing is Kuwait’s focus on the field, which came in second place in digitization even though the amounts are not the highest in the region – about $4.9 billion, of which about $3 billion is in artificial intelligence. The Qataris came in third place in this aspect ($4 billion, of which $3 billion in artificial intelligence) and the Saudi PIF remained far behind – because it admittedly invested $8.3 billion in digitization, but only $300 million in artificial intelligence.

Dr. Yoel Gozhansky, who previously coordinated the handling of the issue of Iran and the Gulf at the MAL and currently serves as head of the Gulf Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), says that since time immemorial there have been large gaps between the statements of the Gulf states and their actual actions and realizations. “The Saudis have stated that they want to be the third largest country in terms of artificial intelligence in the world, and this is not evident now. However, it is possible that we will see this in 2026, with data that will be completely different,” he says.

The Saudi deal of the year and the connection to Trump

The PIF fund, as mentioned, won by a wide margin the title of deal of the year, when it led a consortium to purchase EA for $55 billion, which placed it as the owner of 93% of the holdings in the company. The veteran gaming giant is responsible for a series of familiar games, including FC (formerly FIFA) and The Sims. This is the largest leveraged buyout in history, and it has a connection to the Trump family. One of the entities financing the transaction is the private investment fund “Affinity Partners” managed by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and one of the main investors in it is the same PIF.

The gap between the PIF-EA deal and the equivalents in the world and especially in the Gulf is extremely large, and the next prominent deal is the $10 billion invested by Mubadala in the American investment firm TWG.

Other intriguing investments included 3.5 billion dollars by the Qataris in exchange for 100% of the project of the coastal city of Alam al-Rum in western Egypt, while the Kuwaitis entered into a consortium with the Emirati investment firm MGX, the Singaporean investment company “Tamask”, Microsoft and Blackrock to invest a total of 5 billion dollars in AI Infra.