The Abu Dhabi investor that’s funding AI while trying to save TikTok — with help from Trump

As artificial intelligence startups raise increasingly large sums of cash to fund their swelling infrastructure needs, they’re turning to strategic partners like Nvidia and big venture firms such as Thrive Capital, Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

But one major financier has a name that’s less familiar in the world of tech investing: MGX.

Backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and launched in March 2024, MGX has emerged as a key source of capital as hyperscalers Microsoft, Meta and Google, and startups like OpenAI race to build out the enormous computing power needed to meet expected AI demand.

In September, MGX made another big splash, joining Oracle and Silver Lake in President Donald Trump’s push to get TikTok under U.S. control.

And on Wednesday, MGX was back in the news as part of another giant AI deal. MGX is joining investors including Nvidia, Microsoft, BlackRock and Elon Musk’s xAI in purchasing Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion, the largest global data center deal to date. Aligned designs and operates facilities across North and South America.

MGX was formed out of a joint venture between Group 42 (G42), a tech holding company based in the United Arab Emirates, and Mubadala Investment Company. Despite the geopolitical concerns that come with bringing vast amounts of Middle Eastern money into critical U.S. infrastructure, tech companies are welcoming MGX and its deep pockets into the fold.

MGX’s first major announcement in the U.S. landed in the fall of 2024, not quite two years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT set the generative AI boom in motion.

In its initial deal, MGX joined a consortium — now called AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP) — formed by firms including BlackRock and Microsoft, to spend $100 billion on AI infrastructure, primarily in the U.S. Separately, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 to develop AI technologies in the Middle East, with G42 using Microsoft’s Azure cloud service to power it all.

The AIP consortium is also MGX’s avenue into the latest deal for Aligned.

MGX has since joined as a partner in Stargate, the $500 billion Trump-endorsed joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to build AI infrastructure across the U.S. According to PitchBook, MGX has also invested in numerous companies over the past year, including Databricks, Anthropic and xAI. Its chairman is Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security advisor of the UAE and a brother of the country’s president.

Certain transactions suggest a level of coziness with Trump.

Earlier this year, MGX reportedly provided $2 billion in funding to the crypto exchange Binance, using a cryptocurrency purchased from the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial. Al Nahyan also visited President Trump in the White House this spring to announce a $1.4 trillion investment in the U.S. over the next decade.

And then came TikTok.

On Sept. 25, Trump signed an executive order backing a proposed deal to keep the social media app, owned by China’s ByteDance, running in the U.S.

ByteDance faced an ultimatum under a federal law, passed with bipartisan support from members of Congress, requiring it to either divest the platform’s American business or be shut down in the U.S.

As part of Trump’s executive order, MGX joined with Oracle and Silver Lake to take a combined 45% of TikTok USA, though details still haven’t been officially announced.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., blasted the arrangement.

“MGX – a shady Abu Dhabi firm – has already cut deals to get sensitive American technology while enriching the Trump family’s crypto firm,” Warren said in a statement last month. “The American people deserve to know if the President has struck another backdoor deal for this billionaire takeover of TikTok.”

Representatives for MGX, OpenAI, Microsoft and BlackRock declined to comment for this story.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said tech companies in the U.S. may need to partner with Middle East firms on AI in order to keep them from instead working with our chief international adversary.

“I believe in the Middle East… we either provide the goods or they will go to China,” Moorhead said.

Moorhead added that MGX is following the same playbook as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. They’re trying to diversify away from oil, and AI is one area where they can put money to work.

“The amount of capital required is astronomical,” Moorhead said. “And they’re willing to take the risks.”

Even though tech giants like Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have enough cash to fund their AI ambitions, additional resources are always welcome. That’s also why many AI leaders are renting AI capacity from companies like CoreWeave instead of building it all themselves.

“I think they will find real acceptance among VCs because people are comfortable with sovereign wealth,” said Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Tusk Capital Partners. “This is a tough fundraising environment, so they’re a potentially good source of capital.”

Tusk warned that MGX could get entangled in U.S. politics and the perception that it’s too close to the Trump administration, which could be problematic if a Democrat is in the White House in the coming years.

“I think the biggest risk is that the only narrative right now is they are Trump’s friends,” Tusk said.

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