Mubadala Investment Company

Mubadala Investment Company is a state-owned strategic investor based in Abu Dhabi and wholly owned by the government of the emirate. As of the end of 2024 it reported assets under management of AED 1.2 trillion, about US$330 billion, up 9.1 percent year over year, with a portfolio spanning energy, aerospace, semiconductors, healthcare, life sciences, and technology across six continents ^[1]. It is one of several Abu Dhabi sovereign investment vehicles and is distinct from the older and larger Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). It should also not be confused with G42, the emirate's operating artificial intelligence company, or with MGX, the dedicated AI investment fund that Mubadala helped create in 2024.

Since 2024 Mubadala has moved toward the center of what governments and companies call sovereign AI: the effort by states to secure their own compute, models, and data infrastructure. It was a co-founding partner of MGX, an Abu Dhabi vehicle set up to deploy as much as US$100 billion into chips and AI infrastructure, and through MGX it is connected to the Stargate Project, a large United States data center venture led by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle; to the AI Infrastructure Partnership formed with BlackRock and Microsoft; and to direct stakes in OpenAI and other leading AI companies ^[1][6]. Mubadala has also long owned GlobalFoundries, one of the world's largest contract chip manufacturers, giving it a foothold in AI hardware that predates the current wave of AI investment.

This article distinguishes four entities that are frequently conflated: Mubadala (a sovereign strategic investor), MGX (a purpose-built AI investment fund it co-founded), ADIA (a separate, more passive Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund), and G42 (an operating AI company Mubadala part-owns). They share overlapping ownership and directors but play different roles.

Background and structure

Mubadala in its present form dates to January 2017, when Mubadala Development Company, established in 2002 and since renamed Mamoura Diversified Global Holding, merged with the International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), which had been founded in 1984 ^[2]. The combined entity consolidated much of Abu Dhabi's direct and strategic investment activity under one holding company owned entirely by the government of Abu Dhabi.

Its chairman is Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and its managing director and group chief executive is Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak ^[2]. The company organizes its holdings into investment platforms, reported as Direct Investments, UAE Investments, Disruptive Investments, and Real Estate and Infrastructure Investments ^[2]. Unlike a listed corporation, Mubadala publishes headline figures for assets under management and capital deployed rather than a full income statement; for 2024 it reported that capital deployed grew 33.7 percent year over year to AED 119 billion ^[1].

It is important to separate Mubadala from ADIA. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is a separate sovereign wealth fund, also owned by the government of Abu Dhabi but founded far earlier, in 1976, and considerably larger, with assets estimated at roughly US$1.1 trillion by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute as of late 2024 ^[8]. ADIA is a diversified portfolio investor with a reputation for opacity, whereas Mubadala is an active, direct investor that takes controlling and strategic stakes in operating businesses ^[2][8]. The two funds are governed separately and pursue different mandates.

The AI pivot: MGX

The clearest expression of Mubadala's AI strategy is MGX, formally MGX Fund Management Limited. According to Mubadala's own 2024 review, MGX was created by Abu Dhabi's Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology Council as the emirate's new AI investment champion, with G42 and Mubadala as co-founding partners ^[1]. The vehicle was launched in March 2024 ^[3].

MGX is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser, with Khaldoon Al Mubarak as vice chairman and Ahmed Yahia Al Idrissi as chief executive ^[3]. Its mandate is narrow and deep: it targets semiconductor companies, AI infrastructure companies, and AI technology companies, and it has set out to manage as much as US$100 billion in assets ^[3]. In effect, MGX is the instrument through which Abu Dhabi channels capital into the AI supply chain at scale, while Mubadala provides balance-sheet weight and G42 provides operating and technical expertise.

AI infrastructure investments

The AI Infrastructure Partnership

On 17 September 2024, MGX joined BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), and Microsoft to launch what was announced as the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership ^[5]. The partnership set out to unlock US$30 billion of private equity capital over time and to mobilize up to US$100 billion in total investment when debt financing is included, directed chiefly at new and expanded data center capacity in the United States and the energy infrastructure needed to power it ^[5]. NVIDIA joined as an initial technology partner, offering expertise in AI data centers and AI factories ^[5].

The effort was later known simply as the AI Infrastructure Partnership. In its 2024 review Mubadala stated that MGX co-led the US$30 billion AI Infrastructure Partnership alongside Microsoft, BlackRock, GIP, NVIDIA, and xAI, reflecting the group's expansion beyond its original four partners ^[1].

The Stargate Project

MGX is one of the four initial equity funders of the Stargate Project, the AI data center venture announced on 21 January 2025 by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle ^[6]. The venture plans to invest up to US$500 billion in United States AI infrastructure through 2029, with an initial US$100 billion, and SoftBank's chief executive Masayoshi Son serves as its chairman ^[6]. According to reporting on the deal's structure, SoftBank and OpenAI each committed roughly US$19 billion for a 40 percent stake, while Oracle and MGX would each contribute about US$7 billion ^[6]. The named initial technology partners are Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI, with SoftBank taking financial responsibility and OpenAI operational responsibility; the first sites are in Abilene, Texas ^[6].

MGX's participation makes an Abu Dhabi state vehicle a direct equity holder in one of the largest AI infrastructure programs ever assembled, and one closely associated with United States government backing.

Direct stakes in AI companies

Beyond infrastructure joint ventures, MGX has taken direct positions in leading AI companies. Mubadala's 2024 review states that MGX invested in companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks ^[1]. OpenAI, led by chief executive Sam Altman, completed a US$6.6 billion raise at a US$157 billion valuation in October 2024 and a US$40 billion round at a US$300 billion post-money valuation led by SoftBank in April 2025 ^[9]; MGX's exposure to OpenAI runs both through such equity investment and through the Stargate joint venture ^[1][6]. Mubadala did not disclose the size of the individual MGX stakes in its public summary.

G42 and the United States export-control context

G42, formally Group 42 Holding Ltd, is an Emirati AI company founded in 2018 and based in Abu Dhabi that builds AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, and applications ^[4]. It is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the same figure who chairs MGX, and its group chief executive is Peng Xiao ^[4]. Mubadala took a stake in G42 in 2020, transferring ownership of two information technology companies, Injazat and Khazna, into the group ^[4]. G42 is therefore an operating company in which Mubadala is an investor, not a fund; the distinction matters because G42, not Mubadala or MGX, is the entity that has drawn direct United States national security scrutiny.

That scrutiny stems from G42's earlier ties to Chinese technology. In July 2023 G42 agreed to buy the first of up to nine supercomputers from Cerebras for around US$100 million, and in October 2023 it announced a partnership with OpenAI ^[4]. In November 2023 reporting in the United States raised concerns that G42 might serve as a channel through which advanced American technology could be diverted to Chinese companies or the Chinese government ^[4]. In response, G42 divested a US$100 million stake it had taken in ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, and chief executive Peng Xiao said the company would phase out its use of Huawei equipment; by February 2024 G42 told the Financial Times that it had divested from all of its investments in China ^[4].

That divestment cleared the way for a landmark Western investment. In April 2024 Microsoft announced that it would invest US$1.5 billion in G42, with Microsoft president Brad Smith joining G42's board and G42 committing to run its AI development and deployment on Microsoft's Azure platform ^[4]. The investment was accompanied by oversight arrangements addressing United States concerns about G42's prior China ties, effectively conditioning access to American AI technology on the company's realignment away from Chinese suppliers ^[4]. Even so, the deal drew congressional attention: United States representatives Michael McCaul and John Moolenaar asked the federal government for an intelligence assessment of G42's ties to the Chinese government ^[4]. This sits within the broader apparatus of United States technology controls, including export controls, the Entity List, and reviews by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, that govern how advanced chips and AI technology may cross borders.

The relationship shifted again in 2025. During President Donald Trump's visit to the Gulf, Biden-era restrictions that had blocked the UAE's access to high-end United States chips were eased, and in May 2025 G42 joined OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Cisco to announce Stargate UAE, an AI data center project in Abu Dhabi expected to open in 2026 ^[4][10]. Stargate UAE extends the sovereign AI logic outward: an Emirati company, backed indirectly by Mubadala, building frontier compute on home soil with American technology partners under an evolving export-control framework.

Semiconductor holdings: GlobalFoundries

Mubadala's most significant hardware asset long predates MGX. GlobalFoundries was created in 2009 from the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, officially announced on 4 March 2009, and was owned by Mubadala through its subsidiary, the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) ^[7]. GlobalFoundries is a semiconductor contract manufacturer, headquartered in Malta, New York, that fabricates integrated circuits on wafers for other companies; as of 2023 it ranked as the third-largest semiconductor foundry by revenue ^[7].

Mubadala took the company public on the Nasdaq stock exchange on 28 October 2021, pricing shares at US$47 each and raising about US$2.6 billion, but it retained control: after the listing Mubadala remained the majority owner with roughly an 82 percent stake ^[7]. GlobalFoundries gives Mubadala a direct interest in the physical production of the chips that underpin AI systems, complementing MGX's investments further up the stack in AI infrastructure and models.

Distinguishing the Abu Dhabi entities

Because their ownership and directors overlap, the four entities are easy to confuse. The table below summarizes how they differ.

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The common thread is Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who chairs both G42 and MGX, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who leads Mubadala and serves as MGX vice chairman. This overlap concentrates Abu Dhabi's AI strategy in a small circle, aligning a sovereign investor, a purpose-built fund, and an operating company behind a single national objective.

Significance

Mubadala's importance to AI comes less from its own direct deals than from the architecture it helped build. By capitalizing MGX, it created a vehicle able to write checks large enough to matter in an industry where infrastructure rounds run to tens of billions of dollars, and it positioned Abu Dhabi as a partner of choice for OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, BlackRock, SoftBank, and Oracle at the same time. Its ownership of GlobalFoundries gives it a stake in chip manufacturing, and its investment in G42 gives it a window into an operating AI company that has become a test case for how the United States manages the flow of advanced technology to friendly but non-aligned states. Taken together, these holdings make a single Abu Dhabi institution a recurring name across the compute, capital, and corporate layers of the global AI build-out.

See also

• MGX
• G42
• Stargate Project
• Stargate UAE
• Sovereign AI
• Export controls

References

1. ^Mubadala Investment Company, "Mubadala Investment Company Reports 2024 Financial Results," 8 May 2025. mubadala.com/...any-reports-2024-financial-results
2. ^"Mubadala Investment Company," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...Mubadala_Investment_Company
3. ^"MGX (company)," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...MGX_(company)
4. ^"G42 (company)," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...G42_(company)
5. ^Microsoft, "BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft and MGX launch new AI partnership to invest in data centers and supporting power infrastructure," Microsoft News, 17 September 2024. news.microsoft.com/...gx-launch-new-ai-partnership
6. ^"Stargate LLC," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...Stargate_LLC
7. ^"GlobalFoundries," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...GlobalFoundries
8. ^"Abu Dhabi Investment Authority," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...Abu_Dhabi_Investment_Authority
9. ^"OpenAI," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...OpenAI
10. ^"Stargate UAE," Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/...Stargate_UAE