OpenAI Pursues $50B Investment From Middle East

OpenAI is actively pursuing investments from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds for a new funding round that could reach $50 billion.

CEO Sam Altman is currently in the United Arab Emirates conducting these high-stakes negotiations, with the round expected to close within the first quarter of this year, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Bloomberg reported it first, and CNBC confirmed the news.

This represents a shift from OpenAI’s previous funding history. The company completed a $6.6 billion share sale just three months ago that valued it at $500 billion, following a $40 billion SoftBank-led round in March 2025 that included Microsoft and other major players. But this latest deal dwarfs everything that came before.

Gulf monarchies are rewriting the AI game

Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds have emerged as the dominant force in global AI investment, deploying $66 billion into AI and digital infrastructure in 2025 alone—representing the largest share of AI investments worldwide according to analysis published this month.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund committed $36.2 billion to AI initiatives last year, making it the single largest dealmaker globally, while Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala deployed $12.9 billion across AI and digital assets. Together, the seven largest Gulf wealth funds represented 43% of all sovereign capital invested worldwide in 2025, committing a historic $126 billion total.

These aren’t speculative bets. Gulf sovereign wealth funds view AI as a “strategic asset” rather than a speculative play, Deloitte reported three weeks ago. By 2030, AI is projected to account for 14% of the UAE’s GDP and 12.4% of Saudi Arabia’s GDP, according to recent projections from earlier this month.

Infrastructure empire

What makes this funding round particularly significant is the massive infrastructure projects already underway. OpenAI has partnered with G42, an AI firm backed by Mubadala Investment Company, to develop a 5-gigawatt data center cluster in Abu Dhabi—part of the broader “Stargate” project that aims to create regional data center capabilities for exascale AI workloads.

In terms of the bigger picture, Abu Dhabi-based funds have invested $31 billion in French data centers and $40 billion in U.S. facilities over the past year, while a consortium led by Abu Dhabi’s MGX closed a $40 billion deal for Aligned Data Centers in October 2025.

Saudi Arabia announced plans for a $40 billion fund dedicated to AI technology investments, including semiconductor manufacturers and data centers, with partnerships already established with Qualcomm and Google Cloud for a $10 billion AI hub, analysis from September indicates. Meanwhile, the UAE secured access to hundreds of thousands of advanced semiconductors from the White House eight months ago to support its Abu Dhabi AI campus built in partnership with U.S. firms, including Nvidia.

Control

Sovereign wealth funds were involved in AI venture transactions totaling $46 billion in just the first nine months of 2025, representing nearly half of all AI venture investment for the year, EY analysis from last month revealed.

The geopolitical implications are equally significant. U.S. policymakers have welcomed Gulf investments in data centers and semiconductors as a way to counterbalance China’s influence in AI supply chains.

By 2035, the Gulf region could account for 5-10% of new global AI-optimized GPU deployments, positioning Middle Eastern nations as critical infrastructure partners for American AI companies.

Leaks suggest OpenAI is preparing a “tactical strike” against rivals with GPT-5.3.

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