The Gulf is still spending billions on AI. The question is no longer whether the money is coming. It is whether investors are still willing to accept the same risk to earn it. On October 7, Gulf stock markets gave an early warning. Saudi Arabia’s TASI fell 0.5% to 10,542 points, Abu Dhabi’s ADX lost 0.3%, Dubai’s DFM fell 0.2%, and Qatar’s index declined 0.5%. None of these moves is large enough to suggest that investors are suddenly leaving the Gulf, and that is not what is

Microsoft is investing over $10 billion in the next generation of digital infrastructure in the Gulf. Over the next ten years (between now and 2030), Microsoft intends to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure throughout the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. Additionally, Microsoft intends to invest over $400 million in subsea and terrestrial connectivity in the Middle East. While the magnitude of this investment is notable, the strategic approach taken by Microsoft in ter

The Saudi Arabian fintech market is no longer an emerging stage experiment. Recent investments related to Tabby and barq are indicators that the sector is entering a significantly more capital intensive phase where billion dollar valuations are becoming a standard metric for success instead of being an outlier. Tabby is currently valued at approximately $6.5 billion which is nearly $2 billion more than what it was valued at during its secondary sale in October 2025. In additi

The Gulf played a consistent role in global finance for decades. It was a primary source of global capital, investing in international equity markets, infrastructure development projects, private equity investments, and other significant assets located throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. The region generated substantial wealth domestically and used much of that wealth to invest globally. BlackRock believes that the way the Gulf allocates capital may be changing. BlackRock

This week's biggest technology headlines in the Gulf were not the loudest. Qatar restructured its capital and the UAE announced a research and development partnership. Both of these events, however, indicate something far larger than just another series of AI announcements: Gulf technology markets are establishing greater institutionalism. Qatar established Doha Investment as a platform to manage over 40 companies from the Qatar Investment Authority's domestic portfolio (Oore

A five-gigawatt AI campus sounds like the kind of project designed to make scale itself the strategy. But once computing capacity reaches that size, putting everything in one place creates a different problem: the infrastructure becomes enormous not only in capacity, but in concentration. The UAE is now reportedly reconsidering the architecture of its planned 5GW AI campus in Abu Dhabi, with the original concept of a single large site potentially giving way to a network of sm