Significant capital from Gulf funds has flowed into AI-related businesses in recent years, across generative AI start-ups, semiconductors, chips, infrastructure, data centers and more. 

In parallel, global giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others have announced multi-billion dollar partnership deals with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and others, seeking to benefit from low-cost energy resources, available land, a growing market and an attractive regulatory environment. 

While the SWFs lack the global reach and innovation to compete directly with US or Chinese tech giants themselves, or achieve the scale required for chip or semiconductor production, they have invested in partnership with others and looked at more niche areas where they can add value or acquire new technology to use at home. Yet this strategy is not without risk, given the rapidly changing nature of the sector, unexpected technical breakthroughs, heady valuations, and the ongoing geopolitical decoupling around the world which is making technology and data access more sensitive.