Gareth Nicholson

Middle East Sovereign Wealth Funds: A $3.2 Trillion Opportunity Investors Can’t Ignore Middle East sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) now control more than $3.2 trillion in assets, positioning the GCC as the most influential source of long-term global capital. For investors, this shift represents not just scale — but a fundamental change in how capital is allocated, partnerships are formed, and returns are generated. Why GCC SWFs Matter to Investors In 2024 alone, GCC sovereign funds accounted for over half of global sovereign wealth capital flows, deploying approximately $136 billion worldwide. Institutions such as Saudi Arabia’s PIF, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), and Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) are no longer passive allocators — they are active, strategic investors seeking control, influence, and long-duration value creation. Their growing allocations to private markets, infrastructure, technology, and energy transition are reshaping global investment trends. What Today’s SWFs Are Looking For For investors and managers seeking capital or partnerships, expectations have evolved: • Direct and co-investment opportunities alongside trusted partners • Customized investment structures rather than pooled products • Strong ESG integration, aligned with national economic transformation agendas such as Vision 2030 • Long-term alignment, with typical relationship cycles spanning 12–18 months This capital is patient, but highly selective. Strategic Implications for Investors Accessing GCC SWF capital requires more than performance metrics. Success depends on relationship depth, credibility, cultural understanding, and strategic relevance. Investors able to demonstrate long-term alignment, governance strength, and measurable impact are best positioned to unlock this opportunity. The Bottom Line The $3.2 trillion Middle East SWF opportunity represents one of the most powerful forces shaping global capital markets today. For investors willing to adapt their approach, the reward is not just capital — but enduring strategic partnerships. 🔗 Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/gNpi7hMj

٢

Rokos’ Hedge Fund to Open Abu Dhabi Office in Mideast Push Chris Rokos' hedge fund is planning to open an office in Abu Dhabi next year, according to a person familiar with the matter. The move will help Rokos Capital Management take advantage of trading across global markets, attract top talent and be closer to strategic investors, according to a person familiar with the matter. The new office will be home to investment and trading staff, risk management, investor relations, operations, and legal and compliance experts, over time. Chris Rokos’ $22 billion hedge fund is planning to open an office in Abu Dhabi next year, joining the rush of money managers setting up outposts in the region. The United Arab Emirates has quickly become home to some of the industry’s biggest players, with Dubai playing host to the likes of Millennium Management and Point72 Asset Management. #venturecapital #fundraising #investing Supercap Group Rokos Capital Management

٣

[2/2] AI = Energy. On May 29, the UAE announced that as part of Project Stargate, the government will offer free access to ChatGPT+ for all its residents. AI may be extremely capex intensive, but it may still be cheap. How? Electricity. With overabundant solar and fossil energy, and the capital to fund it, the Arabic peninsula will become one of only a few AI gigafactories in the world. Yes, while Europe frets about non-detachable plastic bottle tops, Dubai will offer free AI for all. Who’s the most egalitarian society now? Nuclear energy could still make France another Saudi Arabia of AI, but will they? Disruptive intelligence As we work together with the Quadrille team, the tilt towards DeepTech in our VC ecosystem is palpable and accelerating innovation at a pace rarely seen in our lifetime. Three trends stick out for us: quantum computing, artificial general intelligence and advanced robotics. Through fascinating due diligence meetings we are coming across teams capable of embedding qbits on silicon, harnessing the scaling capabilities of the semiconductor industry to make modular chiplets carrying a trio of CPU, GPU and QPU. This quantum-classical collocation reduces complexity, boosts performance, and especially reduces energy consumption by orders of magnitude. Elsewhere we have met developers of a digital twin of the mammalian brain, built from 18 million lines of code, producing a neural architecture as it exists inside each of us today, capable of reinforcement learning in dynamic real time situations, intuiting cause-and-effect relationships without historical data. The singularity is so very near. To top if off, drones and robots are not coming, they are here. From the Ukrainian battlefields, to the factory floors of Tesla, to Joby and Archer’s flying cars in Dubai, we are witnessing automation on a massive scale. Gradually, then suddenly. Disruption Fund Alpha rallied +26.6% this month, boosted by nearly all our most interesting and promising companies. Hinge Health saw a very successful IPO; Duolingo reported very strong paid subscription acceleration; GEVernova and Siemens Energy reported their highest order backlogs ever, driven by the electrification race; Cloudflare saw accelerating demand for its unique cyber-safe Edge AI infrastructure, while Snowflake saw a real recovery in data mining volumes. AI semiconductor bellwethers Nvidia and Broadcom rebounded near their all time highs thanks to Nvidia’s solid Blackwell revenues; quantum computing leaders Rigetti and IonQ also reported steady progress on their qbit roadmaps, while D-Wave launched their Advantage2 hybrid quantum-classical computing device. BTC Yield ? France's The Blockchain Group raised close to €100m in the month, accelerating their transformation into Europe’s very own leading BTC treasury company, with a BTC yield of over 1000% since inception. We really are living in revolutionary times. #disruptionfund #ai #innovation

١٥

‏١‏ ‏تعليق واحد‏

INITIAL THOUGHTS ON NEBIUS'S Q4 2025 EARNINGS So, Nebius Group has reported its Q4 2025 results. This report was expected to be highly interesting, especially since the company was likely to provide guidance for the current year—which it did, while also revealing plans to add 9 new data centers in the coming years. Full disclosure: these are my preliminary thoughts, and I haven't updated my model yet. I plan to publish a detailed article with an updated forecast and valuation on Seeking Alpha next week. There were a few key points I was most interested in: 🔹 Did the company manage to beat its 2025 ARR guidance? 🔹 Would the 2026 ARR guidance change, and what would the 2026 revenue guidance look like? 🔹 Would the company provide CAPEX guidance for 2026? Let’s go through each of them. With actual Q4 2025 revenue at $227.7M and full-year revenue at $529.8M, the company fell short of the consensus estimate ($242.8M for Q4). However, as I’ve noted many times before, given the small number of investment houses covering the company, the consensus is non-representative in this case. What’s more important is that the company exceeded its ARR guidance: while the guidance was $0.9–1.1B, the actual figure came in at $1.25B. This confirms once again that Arkady Volozh and his team take a conservative approach to forecasting. The fact that the company beat its ARR guidance increases the likelihood of a beat on the 2026 guidance, which remained unchanged (which is also a good sign). The company also provided revenue guidance for this year: management expects it to reach $3–3.4B. The fact that revenue is lower than ARR is quite expected, as the bulk of revenue is anticipated in the second half of the year. Admittedly, the revenue guidance came in below my expectations ($3.6B), which I laid out in my previous Seeking Alpha article. However, I believe the company will outperform its guidance by year-end, especially considering the new plans to launch additional data centers. The CAPEX situation is quite intriguing. Given the aggressive expansion plans, CAPEX came in even higher than I expected: management is guiding for $16–20B in CAPEX for 2026. For context, I was expecting $13.4B. How will these costs be financed? Nebius management stated that 60% of these expenses will be funded by cash on the balance sheet ($3.7B as of Q4 2025), operating cash flow, and customer prepayments. Prepayments are indeed happening, which is a positive sign. This is backed up by the $1.56B in deferred revenue. There are several options for monetizing the remaining portion, but a debt issuance seems most preferable. Selling shares at current levels isn't very attractive, nor is selling stakes in portfolio companies, as they still have significant growth potential. That’s all for today. I’ll share more detailed thoughts in my Seeking Alpha article next week. #Nebius #NBIS #AIInfrastructure #DataCenters #Investing

١٠

Paper "estimates equity tail risk premia by decomposing the squared VIX into four components: tail risk premium, realised tail, variance risk premium, and realised variance." https://lnkd.in/exZTaVvU

٢١

‏١‏ ‏تعليق واحد‏

A unit of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has invested in Dignari Capital Partners (DCP), a Hong Kong‑based private credit investment manager https://lseg.group/4lqN30D

٣

Great analysis from Iridium Advisors in partnership with Copley. I’d encourage anyone investing in Emerging Markets, or operating in the region to download the pack. What stands out in the data is the continued broadening of GCC exposure within GEM portfolios, led by UAE and Saudi Arabia. Selected companies are clearly gaining traction and now sit among the more widely owned names in the EM universe. Importantly, this still feels like the early stages. With penetration continuing to build, there remains significant scope for further upside and investment growth across the region. #emergingmarkets #activemanagement #mena #gcc #saudi

١١