I joined PitchBook!

This probably isn’t news to you if we are connected on Linkedin, but it is worth a mention here in any case. I have officially joined PitchBook as their new Asia editor. I am also PitchBook’s first editorial hire for the region, which will see me kickstarting on-ground APAC coverage for the team very soon.

What this also means is that I have moved back to Singapore after 1.5 years in the UAE/Middle East. Frankly, this was a surprise move, even for me. My conversation with PitchBook started more than a month before the Iran-US war broke out, and while I did receive a separate opportunity to return to Dubai, I still felt the PitchBook role was too good to miss…

What about this Substack and podcast? The short answer is: I do plan to keep it alive, but it will have to take a backseat in the initial months as I transition into this new full-time role! So please bear with me, 2026 has been rough on a lot of us already…

Yes, there is a war taking place in the Middle East right now (when was there never a war?) but I’m actually still very bullish on the UAE and am very certain that Dubai is going to bounce back so quickly once the Hormuz crisis simmers down.

I continue to get vastly different opinions about this war, which can range from Trump hate doomsday distress to an almost propaganda-ish nationalistic pride (for good reason, I guess?) I don’t think there has ever been a more confusing time for governments, investors, and the man or woman on the street.

In these few weeks alone, we had Claude Mythos’s cyber-offensive advancements creating widespread panic among global regulators and banks, and viral footage in India sparking debate around AI replacing manual labour. Here in Asia, nearly all countries are actively rationing energy supplies as we watch the inflation meter spike…

The world has also never gotten this noisy and fragmented. There are plenty forces at play. The barriers-to-entry for content production has never been this low thanks to AI and technology. While there are massive benefits to that, the flipside also is that media publishers are now unable to keep up, and have to compromise editorial independence for dollars.

I consider a huge privilege to do what I do and stay independent while at it. For those who have financially supported me this far, I do remember every single one of you and deeply appreciate your support.

Until then, the journey continues! So much to do, so little time. If you’d like to stay connected, join us at the Whatsapp chat group below. A few of us are there.

Always on,

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Interesting reads this week! 🤓

• Mark Mobius, ‘Indiana Jones of emerging markets,’ dies at 89 (Nikkei Asia)

• Japan views private credit as a policy pillar despite overseas market turmoil (Reuters)

• Private credit funds attract Japan investors, more than doubling in 1 year (Nikkei Asia)

• Global quantum VC Quantonation selects Yaqumo as its first Japanese investment (PR release)

• Three SWFs anchor new China-Asean investment platform; US$520 million secured in first close (Business Times)

• Danantara to Step Up Middle East, Energy Security Investments (Bloomberg)

• IEA chief predicts two years for Middle East energy recovery (AGBI)

• Secondary market in Asia sees pickup in activity as players search for liquidity (Business Times)

• Prosecutors seek 10-year jail term for eFishery co-founder (DealStreetAsia)

• The move away from concierge care in private hospitals has begun (Straits Times Opinion)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Former Egyptian ambassador (UK and Hong Kong) Amr El Henawy discusses the US-Iran conflict in this new episode!🎙️💫

A peek at ONE Championship’s FY2024 numbers

SO! ONE Championship released its FY2024 financial numbers a few days ago. As usual, there was a two year delay on this report (we’re in the year 2026) so we’ll have to caveat for that. Let’s take a look at it together.

Topline figures show improvement but cash is tight

On the surface, it certainly looks like ONE has improved its topline figures. Revenue has grown, while losses have shrunk.

• Group revenue grew 37% to $93.2 million in FY2024

• Cost of sales slashed by 22.6% to $25 million

• Total losses for the year shrank 47.7% to $47.1 million

• Net cash outflow used in operating activities roughly halved to $28.4 million

But the big expense items — notably staff and marketing costs — have either remained the same or risen. Employee benefits were flat at $21 million in FY2023 and 2024, while marketing expenses grew 17.6% to $70.1 million. (See highlighted below)

You can see signs of layoffs (see rise in termination benefits below), as well as a reduction or possibly an adjustment of employment packages where salaries and bonuses were reduced, but compensated with share-based payments (highlighted below.)

It signals some level of tightening at the company.

ONE’s loss before tax from continuing operations contracted 41.1% to $47 million — likely due to a reduction in overall operational activity from fewer and cheaper events, as well as the discontinuation subsidiaries like ONE China and ONE Esports.

Cash is low. ONE Championship held just $16 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of FY2024. At the same time, some $20 million was suddenly invested into bond funds in FY2024 (from nearly nothing in FY2023) presumably to preserve the little cash they have on hand.

But take a step back and you’ll find these to ultimately be very small figures compared to the losses ONE has racked up.

ONE Championship has $576 million in accumulated losses compared to the $586.6 million in share capital raised from investors like Peak XV Partners (former Sequoia Capital India), Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Guggenheim Investments, Temasek Holdings, Heliconia Capital, Mission Holdings and others.

In addition to this, ONE has also accrued $431.5 million in unutilised tax losses meant to set off against future taxable income. According to the report, “no deferred tax assets have been recognised due to the uncertainty of the utilisation of the benefits.” (See below.)

But how much of ONE’s revenue was cash? Very little

One of the biggest issues the global MMA and investment community has had with ONE was the opacity around the nature of its revenue and how it was recognised. For the first time, ONE’s auditors (Ernst & Young) have started to report exactly how much of it was cash versus non-cash. The results are pretty astounding.

ONE has 5 revenue streams: i) Ticketing; ii) Sponsorship; iii) Broadcasting; iv) Digital platform; v) Merchandise. Its top two revenue contributors are broadcasting (81.4%) and sponsorship (15.2%) in FY2024.

According to ONE’s FY2024 report, 93% of ONE’s broadcast revenue was non-cash, while 22% of its sponsorship revenue was non-cash.

So this would give ONE Championship:

• $5.3 million in broadcast cash revenue

• $11.1 million in sponsorship cash revenue

If we were to assume that all other revenue streams were in cash, the total actual cash revenue ONE generated in FY2024 would be:

$5.3m (broadcast) + $11.1m (sponsorship) + $0.3m (ticketing) + $2.3m (digital platform) + $0.5m (merchandise) = $19.5 million in FY2024

That’s barely enough to keep ONE fully operational because its net cashflow used in operational activities for FY2024 was $28.4 million.

The numbers also underscore the weakness of ONE’s events business. ONE Championship held a total of 59 events in 2024, comprising 4 international cards, 46 ONE Friday Fights and 9 ONE Fight Nights.

• ONE 165 (Tokyo) — Jan 28

• ONE 166 (Qatar) — Mar 1

• ONE 167 (Bangkok) — Jun 8

• ONE 168 (Denver) — Sept 7

• ONE Friday Fights 47-92 (46 fights)

• ONE Fight Night 18-26 (9 fights)

Even with 59 events, out of which 3 were major international cards in Tokyo, Qatar and Denver, total ticketing revenue was just $304,000, while sponsorship cash revenue came up to only $11.1 million.

What next for ONE?

That’s hard to say but things do look challenging. ONE’s 5 year broadcast deal with Amazon Prime is set to expire this year and it’s not clear if this contract will renew. If this ends, it will be a major cut on ONE’s already modest broadcast revenues.

ONE has already turned to ESPN to broker a new deal to broadcast to Australia and New Zealand, but it’s unlikely to be a major contract given the limited size of the ANZ market.

On the events side, there were online murmurs that the Singapore-based MMA promoter has cancelled its US event for 2026 and laid off its already small US team.

Qatar was for a brief moment a promising market having scored the QIA as a key investor back in 2021 and again in 2024, but even that’s starting to look uncertain with the ongoing Iran-Gulf crisis unfolding today.

ONE’s most recent Qatar event was February 2025, with no new announcements made for that market so far. At the same time, UFC held its own Qatar fight in November last year, signaling that the Qataris are quite open to hosting its competitors in Doha.

Furthermore, ONE’s FY2024 report added that ONE’s Cayman entity has acquired $9m worth of ordinary shares from its Singapore entity in March 2026 in what looks like another creative attempt to engineer its finances.

Mission Holdings, the investment firm owned by long time ONE investor, Saurabh Mittal, continues to be ONE’s ultimate holding company.

ICYMI:

• ONE Championship’s FY2023 results are out. Let’s dive right in (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
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Interesting reads this week! 🤓

• What a month of war has taught us in the Gulf (Semafor)

• Dubai rolls out $272m economic stimulus package amid Middle East conflict (Arab News)

• Iran’s Wealth Is Parked on London’s Billionaires’ Row (WSJ)

• In the AI smartphone race, security will decide the winner (Nikkei Asia)

• The hunger for ‘content’ is keeping us culturally stuck (Financial Times)

• Energy crisis hits currencies of Asian economies reliant on Middle East (Nikkei Asia)

• Was the Iran war really necessary? (Straits Times Opinion)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Former Egyptian ambassador (UK and Hong Kong) Amr El Henawy discusses the US-Iran conflict in this new episode!🎙️💫

It’s hard to keep up when changes keep happening all the time

For now, the biggest “change” for Asia is that some countries are literally on the brink of zero energy this week. The Philippines has already declared a state of national energy emergency, Pakistan is running out of LNG supplies having relied on Qatar for 99% of its imports just last year. Governments in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam are encouraging remote work to reduce energy consumption.

If this continues, we might very well see spiking food prices, global famine, a recession, all while dealing with AI disruption, joblessness, tariffs, the unravelling of private credit and SaaS valuations…

Such FUN…!

But what’s even more fun is Asian GPs keeping their LPs up-to-date while changes switch out in real time. To be fair, a Trump presidency has shown past patterns of accelerated chaos, but it makes life more difficult when investors are actively fundraising.

Imagine walking into a networking hall. You’re trying to read the room so you can slot yourself strategically into a money-making conversation but guess what? The occupants of that room are partly schizophrenic because the most pressing matter has completely changed from just 3 months back.

In the last 2 years alone, US LPs were asking about eFishery, then AI, then tariffs, now a Gulf war and inflation, shared a Singapore investor. To top things off, a GP can take at least 2-3 months to compile a full audited portfolio update for LPs. By the time it’s ready, the economic situation would have completely changed.

Many times these LPs can’t refer to these reports at all because they would be completely outdated and would have to come to their own conclusions about where portfolios “truly” are.

Many other VC investors I’ve spoken with in Singapore are also experiencing “too much” dry powder, thanks (or no thanks?) to lowered deal quality, and existing portfolio companies working harder to turn profitable and raising less cash.

It’s not exactly a good problem to have. If you have too much cash to deploy, you can:

• Sit on your hands and wait until markets turn better or;

• Return the capital back to LPs. But why forego your annual fees and maybe never see your LPs ever for Fund 2, 3, 4?

The nature of tech investing in Asia has also shifted dramatically these last few years. Not only has SaaS taken a beating, but the nature of AI investing today also touches digital infrastructure and data centres, as well as defense/security fields whether in space, cybersecurity and quantum which are often sovereign-led. These aren’t capabilities you develop overnight.

The challenge of staying nimble is also faced by governments, who have to learn how to build 10, 20, 50 year plans while staying adaptable to changes on the ground. I’m sure we can agree that the stakes for these nations are remarkably high — perhaps more so than ever before.

🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
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Interesting reads this week! 🤓

• China still can’t quit Iran’s oil (Straits Times)

• This is the moment for an ‘Arab NATO’ (Semafor)

• Jet Fuel Crisis Accelerates as Kuwait Strikes Remove ~10% of Seaborne Supply (Windward)

• Gulf companies turn to share buybacks (AGBI)

• UAE Launches Phase 1 of R&D Tax Incentives Programme (UAE Ministry of Finance)

• Blackstone leads $250m investment in UAE payments platform ADGT (Press release)

• Private credit has some debt (Matt Levine’s Opinion Newsletter)

• Carlyle and KKR to build $2bn data centres for US Army (Financial Times)

• Hong Kong weighs ‘big bang’ tax cuts for asset managers (Financial Times)

• ‘First meaningful stress test’: Asia family offices weigh exit as Gulf conflict shakes Dubai’s wealth-hub allure (Business Times)

• Mideast Funds Ride China AI Euphoria to World-Beating IPO Gains (Bloomberg)

• Our thoughts on Grab’s acquisition of Foodpanda Taiwan (Momentum Works)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Former Egyptian ambassador (UK and Hong Kong) Amr El Henawy discusses the US-Iran conflict in this new episode!🎙️💫

What will Gulf 2.0 look like?

We’re into Week 3 and there doesn’t seem to be any let-up over here. Instead, Iran has continued its strikes on Saudi Arabia and Qatar while diplomatic efforts were reportedly underway, signaling its refusal to relent. The US is sending military backup to the Middle East in the meantime. One hopes this will lead to a detente rather an actual troop landing in Iran, the latter of which would certainly be Bibi Netanyahu’s ideal scenario, but who can tell what’s happening these days? There are people who believe that Bibi has six fingers and is possibly dead…

In addition to the scenario planning that I wrote about last week, Gulf investors are already anticipating the region to come out of this quite differently.

At least one UAE venture capitalist I spoke with is in active discussions with his team to revise their investment strategy to include and define areas within defense and security, in anticipation that the Gulf sovereigns will be highly motivated to strengthen national capabilities in water, food, power, cybersecurity etc once this is over.

The Gulf’s intent to develop sovereign defense assets was always there. In fact most of their current efforts are sovereign-led (ie: Space42) with plenty of dependence on US tech and military, but the last 3 weeks has shown that even that is not enough, opined the investor.

Two possible scenarios may emerge in the medium term:

• A NATO-like alliance between the Gulf states: This would allow the GCC to exchange military intel, technology, assets with each other. It would strengthen Arab unity against potential foreign attacks, while giving them leverage to negotiate with larger powers be it the US, China, Russia.

• China to play an even bigger role in the Gulf: It would not be a stretch to imagine the Gulf nations leaning even more heavily into China to diversify and balance their dependence on the West after this is over. The China-Gulf relationship was already growing these last few years. China has been exporting its tech (ie: ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, BYD), infrastructure building capabilities, family offices and talent.

In the near term, Gulf startup fundraising will be challenged (and so will exits, unfortunately) but the sovereigns are likely to lean into the zeitgeist of the moment and continue backing their local GPs because they still play a crucial role in job creation and economic diversification. These national goals will remain and are unlikely to go away, a separate Gulf investor shared with me.

For now, Dubai property sales are showing early signs of a slowdown. International airports in the Gulf have seen traffic plunge 60-90% compared to the same time last year, according to FlightAware statistics.

The city is quieter, residents tell me, but it isn’t quite the “hollowing out” mainstream media portrays it to be. I personally know many residents (mostly families) taking a temporary respite overseas while the uncertainty shakes out. The question is whether many of these who are leaving — especially the HNWIs — will return. I personally think they will, but as they say, we’ll have to watch and see.

ICYMI:

• Asia scrambles to conserve energy as Iran war disrupts oil and gas supplies (AP)

• Dubai’s property market is getting tested, as Iran war drags on (The Morning Context)

🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
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Interesting reads this week! 🤓

• Delivery Hero investor Aspex calls on CEO to step up turnaround or face ouster (Reuters)

• Singapore warns of illicit funds in popular low-tax investment vehicles (Financial Times)

• Global Funds Look to Malaysia as Iran War Shakes Up Asian Assets (Bloomberg)

• Japan’s next-generation startups go global in a tougher world (Nikkei Asia)

• Hong Kong IPO pipeline set to suffer amid Beijing’s scrutiny of ‘red-chip’ listings (Reuters)

• Iran conflict turns shipping market into ‘wild west’ (Financial Times)

• Private credit’s meltdown will hurt Gulf SWFs and family offices (Matein’s Substack)

• Private credit deals now require greater margins of safety: IFS Capital (DealStreetAsia)

• A New World Order in the Making (Quilette)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Former Egyptian ambassador (UK and Hong Kong) Amr El Henawy discusses the US-Iran conflict in this new episode!🎙️💫

Scenario planning starts now

We’re at Week 2 of the Gulf crisis and the ripple effects of the recent escalations are increasingly felt across businesses in Asia and globally. Brent crude has cracked $100 a barrel, international air and sea lanes are still facing major disruptions. It’s still hard to tell if the Straits of Hormuz will return to normal by April or even June?

Over 80% of crude oil and LNG leaving the Straits of Hormuz is destined for Asia with varying degrees of exposure across countries, writes Sam Reynolds and Ramnath N. Iyer for IEEFA. In Southeast Asia, transportation companies like Grab are already girding themselves for price hikes and will likely face margin pressure given their operations in net oil importer countries with price sensitive consumers.

I am getting varying responses on what this will mean for Gulf businesses.

Needless to say, tourism, F&B and aviation will be the first to get hit, with the oil rich sovereigns being the ones bearing the initial brunt of losses. Local businesses will turn to domestic demand for sales. E-commerce may even see positive growth as people switch from offline to online, shared one industry stakeholder in UAE. (Similar to COVID!)

One Gulf investor I spoke with said that FMCG has historically shown resilience during crises like these, even during the 2008 GFC which led to expat departures en masse leaving behind a ton of semi-built properties and abandoned cars.

But Gulf VCs are certainly not throwing caution to the wind. Some have already begun advising consumption-dependent portfolio firms to extend cash runways and take measures to cut cashburn where possible. According to one VC, their runway guidance is at least 18 months.

Middle East cost increases usually come from supply chain bottlenecks, which is currently experiencing reduced capacity and limited diversion possibilities — which may present a unique opportunity for some, especially those who own their own infrastructure, opined one logistics firm.

But a lot depends on how long this drags on. If the situation prolongs for another 2-3 months, challenges may start to surface. Most of these teams are currently working on “getting ahead on these scenarios” to ensure they’re sufficiently hedged if the situation does indeed worsen.

🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
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Interesting reads this week! 🤓

• China’s ByteDance Gets Access to Nvidia AI Chips via Southeast Asia (WSJ)

• How a rising star at a top Thai bank’s $100m Web3 fund used fake crypto deals to swindle investors (Scamurai Substack)

• The Swiss Attorney and the Sotheby’s CEO: The Elite Fixers for a $1.5 Billion Fugitive (Whale Hunting: Project Brazen)

• Human Brain Cells Run New Data Centers in Singapore, Melbourne (Bloomberg)

• New Prediction Market With Crypto Roots Is Making Waves in Asia (Bloomberg)

• SoftBank-backed PayPay valued at $12.7 billion in Nasdaq debut as shares jump (Reuters)

• Investors turn to India as private market outpaces regional peers, McKinsey survey shows (Reuters)

• UAE banks move data abroad following Iran strikes (Semafor)

• Iran war could narrow Saudi Arabia’s deficit (Semafor)

• The Iranian school bombing and the information war (Financial Times)

• Lasers, radars and drones: Middle East war spurs hunt for cheaper air defence (Financial Times)

• CVC’s Asia fund to bring home $115m carry after slew of exits (DealStreetAsia)

• Partners Group sounds alarm on private credit default rates (Financial Times)

• Investment fund questions valuations in Blue Owl’s private credit portfolio (Financial Times)

• Adjusted EBITDA and the masking of leverage (Financial Times)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Former Egyptian ambassador (UK and Hong Kong) Amr El Henawy discusses the US-Iran conflict in this new episode!🎙️💫

The Iran-Gulf crisis: What next for the UAE?

For full disclosure, I am in Singapore right now, not Dubai. Many of you have reached out to check on me (thank you!) This past week has been very strange and disorienting since I’m still closely connected with many UAE groups who spend their waking hours swapping images of missile/drone interceptions, verifying news headlines and monitoring FlightRadar, while making contingency plans on their future in the UAE.

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is choosing to evacuate. The UAE appears to have done a superb job defending its residents from more than 800 missile and drone strikes while sustaining limited damage. Residents are still going about their daily lives, taking their kids to the park, going for beach jogs, buying groceries.

But the PTSD among some is real. Not everyone has had first-hand experience living in a warzone. The good news is that many UAE residents are crises-tested, having come from places like Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, so these groups tend to be resilient to such upheavals. But the decision to stay or leave is often contingent on many other factors as well, such as the strength of your passport, the nature of your job/business, cashflow, family, or a home elsewhere.

The first ones to leave are those with financial means. Evacuation costs can go as high as $250,000, according to the FT. A one-way economy flight from Dubai to Singapore on Emirates Airlines cost about AED 16,000 or S$5,500 per head on Wednesday. Tickets sold out in minutes and was still cancelled after UAE airspace was closed abruptly that afternoon. Others are attempting a 5 hour drive to Oman, but information is patchy.

Crises such as these tend to expose the hearts and thoughts of people in very interesting ways. Some are publicly shaming the residents who have chosen to evacuate. Others are making almost vain displays of bravado, broadcasting patriotic calls to stay and build for the region.

The truth is that the situation is very fluid, and wouldn’t require a lot to tip the entire region towards further escalation. One worst case scenario would be an Iranian strike on critical infrastructure — just a water desalination or power plant will do — and the equation would change instantly.

According to an IFRI report, Kuwait relies on desalination for 90% of its drinking water, Oman 86%, Saudi Arabia 70% and UAE 42%. Two AWS data centres have already been hit in the UAE, leading to internet and banking disruptions this past week.

All this is unprecedented for the Emirates. Few expats would have ever imagined the peace-loving Emiratis to come under attack. But the latest turn of events only underscores the realities of the regional context the UAE is in — conflict prone, volatile, uncertain. These aren’t foreign or unnatural occurrences for someone with Middle East origins. But it is for those from the outside.

The UAE has made tremendous progress as a financial hub for asset allocators, funds and family offices in recent years. Dubai’s DIFC for instance, is home to 500 wealth and asset management companies, with nearly half of them joining in the last two and a half years alone.

UAE’s safe haven status will certainly be put to the test. The longer this drags on, the more costly it will be. But right now at least, it’s hard to tell exactly how much further this can go on. Gulf experts are confident that Dubai will bounce back. But the investors who want a piece of Middle East’s market aren’t in a position to pick the good times from the bad. It’s a package deal. That’s how it works.

🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
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Gulf crisis taking the headlines this week 🤓

• How Dubai’s safe-haven status is being put to the test (Reuters)

• UAE spent $1bn a day downing missiles and drones, analysts say (AGBI)

• Military briefing: how Iran could wage a new ‘tanker war’ (Financial Times)

• The nightmare Iran energy scenario is becoming reality (The Economist)

• Gulf states could review overseas investments to ease financial strains caused by Iran war (Financial Times)

• The Iran Question is all about China (Beyond the Ideological Substack) » Highly recommend

• The Iran War is an economic disaster for India (Matein Khalid Substack)

• Asia’s big economies brace for Iran war energy shock (Financial Times)

Other Asia stories:

• Blackstone’s flagship private credit fund hit with wave of redemptions (Financial Times)

• Liquidity woes push Southeast Asia’s VCs to continuation funds (DealStreetAsia)

• How Sea Group’s most profitable year ended in a 16% stock selloff (DealStreetAsia)

• DayOne: The Singapore flip riding the AI wave to a multi-billion IPO (Asia Tech Review Substack)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Will the Iranian regime fall by March 31?

Former Egyptian ambassador (UK and Hong Kong) Amr El Henawy discusses the US-Iran conflict in this new episode!🎙️💫

A global panic attack on SaaS, layoffs and AI ensues

The meltdown in US software shares this week is yet another reminder that AI doomsday is fast approaching, yet so few of us truly understand the scope and depth of how this will impact jobs and entire economies.

Shares of Crowdstrike, Salesforce, DataDog, DocuSign have all taken a hit this week, reportedly spooked by a dystopian forecast by Citrini Research around an aggressive AI buildout and AI agent adoption leading to the year 2028.

Some also smell a unique buying opportunity for select stocks — provided you’re from the camp that software giants aren’t about to be wiped out by the AI plague. Not in the immediate future anyway…

I think most of us can agree that the “disintermediation” of software giants by AI agents is real, but experts are still divided about the eventual outcome. Will this cement the SaaS incumbents? Or will it push them into the background as value builds on the new agentic layer over time?

Then there is also AI’s impact on jobs.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey slashed 4,000 jobs this week or nearly half of Block’s workforce despite more than doubling its gross profits in the recent quarter. According to Dorsey, he’s choosing to make these structural changes pre-emptively.

“So why are we changing how we operate moving forward?

The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.

I don't think we're early to this realization. I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes. I'd rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively.”

(Source: Jack Dorsey, Block’s Q4 2025 Shareholder Letter)

How far global policymakers and sovereign funds are digesting these rapid changes is hard to say. One can only imagine what this would spell for fiscal budgets globally…

Here in Singapore at least, policymakers are forced to re-think the playbook on growth. I had a great catchup with a friend of mine at Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB) recently who shared that more “fundamental questions” are getting asked at the government agency today.

A return to fundamentals…

For context, one of EDB’s key founding objectives involved driving FDI into the country. Since the 1960s/70s, one way to measure that was by the number of new jobs created. That worked during Singapore’s early days, but this dynamic is getting tested in this new AI era.

Not only do we not know how AI will influence the shape of future economies and types of jobs, it is actually possible to envision a future where GDP growth can grow without job creation.

Wage growth might emerge as a more important metric to track. Prioritising job quality > quantity will also be key, but that invariably poses challenges because how then do you accurately measure and quantify these desired qualitative outcomes?

A framework reset is required, he says. But that also comes with understanding the true cost of policy tradeoffs — something Singapore’s new leadership has not developed much experience for because the original frameworks had worked so well.

It’s still early days yet, and I guess one can take heart that the right questions are getting asked. But whether we reach the right consensus at speed is perhaps a different thing altogether.

Meanwhile in the UAE…⬇️

(I have no idea how to digest this)

🔒 Want a deeper discussion on PE/VC and startups in Gulf and Asia?
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Interesting reads 🤓

• Putting data centres in space is even harder than it sounds (Financial Times)

• World’s biggest PE houses struggle to exit China deals (Financial Times)

• Private equity bets big on Asia’s personal care, beauty boom (DealStreetAsia)

• IPO Candidates Head Overseas as Southeast Asian Markets Lag (Bloomberg)

• Sequoia’s Former India Unit Rocked by a Bitter Split Over Power & Profit Shares (Newcomer Newsletter)

• Our thoughts on Deliveroo quitting Singapore (Momentum Works)

• Saudi-Owned Scopely Takes Majority Stake in Turkey’s Loom Games (Bloomberg)

• Saudi relaxes rules for foreign companies to establish headquarters in the country (Semafor)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Saison Capital’s Looi Qin En discusses stablecoins, RWA tokenisation and the shift from founder to investor🎙️💫

Turkey’s Getir sues Mubadala for $700m

Sounds like Getir’s founders are determined not to let Mubadala get away with this one.

Barely two weeks after Uber announces its decision to acquire Getir from Mubadala, Getir’s founders have launched a $700m lawsuit against its UAE sovereign investor. Both have been at loggerheads for over a year now.

Mubadala first invested in the Turkish superapp in 2021 and then again in 2022, propelling Getir to a $11.8 billion valuation at its peak. By 2024, things began to unravel. In June that year, the Abu Dhabi investor led a $250 million cash injection as part of a restructuring plan. That agreement fell apart.

Among the many areas of contention was the way Getir’s assets were broken up and divested. These assets cover ride-hailing, fintech, grocery delivery and others.

Under the plans, the remaining assets would be housed in a standalone business, including its FreshDirect grocery service in New York, in which the founders would have a controlling stake.

However, Salur and Borançılı allege in the lawsuit that only the most unprofitable assets — FreshDirect and the online shopping platform n11 — were ever transferred. They claim they are still owed assets such as Getir Finance, which was valued at $510mn last year, and that various Mubadala entities have conspired against them to breach the agreement. (Source: Financial Times)

Getir co-founder Nazim Salur told Sifted that he would “never have taken Mubadala as an investor” had he known things would turn out this way. He further alleges that he and his co-founders were sidelined at a board meeting meant to finalise an emergency shareholder vote to determine Getir’s future.

But Getir is in desperate need of cash and on the brink of bankruptcy, according to reports. 18,000 Turkish jobs are also at stake. Mubadala argues that they were Getir’s only ticket to survival.

Guess we’ll have to sit tight and watch this one…🍿🍿🍿

ICYMI:

• Getir founders sue investor Mubadala for $700m (Sifted)

• Inside the bitter courtroom drama between Getir founders and lead investor Mubadala: ‘It’s a coup’ (Sifted)

• Newsletter 25: The Turkish dilemma; Is Egypt the closest comparable to the Philippines? (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

Among a horde of other developments:

Saudi Arabia’s appointment of a new investment minister signals mounting urgency in the kingdom to raise foreign capital as the Vision 2030 development plan undergoes a revamp amid lower oil prices and tighter fiscal conditions, reports AGBI.

Abu Dhabi is forming (another) new state-backed investment firm called Judan Financial. It will house financial services assets including Lunate, RIQ, Wio Bank. Judan is expected to have a valuation of $27b and AUM of $237b. It is also raising external capital for it.

Breadfast closes $50m pre-Series C led by Mubadala, joined by Olayan Financing Companying, SBI Investment Co., IFC and others. The Egyptian startup first began as a fresh bread subscription service before evolving into an online supermarket platform with units in quick-commerce and grocery delivery.

Stake, raises $31m Series B led by Emirates NBD, joined by Mubadala’s MENA Venture Capital Fund, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Property Finder, STV NICE Fund, Wa’ed Ventures, GFH Partners, and Ellington Properties. The fractional real estate ownership firm operates in UAE and Saudi.

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Interesting reads 🤓

• The $5 Trillion Private Equity Imbalance (iCapital)

• Private credit stocks slide after Blue Owl halts redemptions at fund (Financial Times)

• Russian expats in Phuket want to pay with stablecoins (Bloomberg Opinion)

• OpenAI, Anthropic Deals Power Abu Dhabi’s $100 Billion AI Bet (Bloomberg)

• Data leak at Abu Dhabi finance summit exposes politicians and business leaders (Financial Times)

• Saudi VC fund to localise defence manufacturing (AGBI)

• The AI bubble will burst. The Middle East isn’t ready. (Semafor)

• The Question Problem - SIN vs DXB (Contour Substack)

• Chinese companies overtake US in Singapore investment (Financial Times)

• Why China’s Venture Capital Buyback Safety Net Is Fraying (Caixin Global)

• Singapore sets up workgroup to strengthen venture capital, private equity markets (CNA)

• India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund (TechCrunch)

• Grab is all grown up and acting like a public company (but investors still aren’t happy (Asia Tech Review Substack)

• Physical books making a comeback in Asia, says leading publisher (Nikkei Asia)

• Amazon Arabic ‘storefront’ aims to spread literature beyond Mena (AGBI)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Saison Capital’s Looi Qin En discusses stablecoins, RWA tokenisation and the shift from founder to investor🎙️💫

Spacetech isn’t just for science fiction nerds anymore

Nowhere have we witnessed the greatest shift for space than right here in Asia and the Gulf. Until as recently as 2010s, most of the space industry outside of the US was largely confined to national budgets with technology developed for military or defense purposes. The world has changed dramatically since.

Geopolitical conflicts — be it South China Sea, India-Pakistan, Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, UAE/Saudi-Yemen — have grown in intensity. At the same time, the parallel rise of dual-use technology and private capital markets in China, India and Singapore have birthed an entirely new class of spacetech startups with commercial business cases in areas as vast as agriculture, data centres, and insurance.

India’s $15 billion spacetech market is set to more than double by 2030, thanks to its heady mix of ISRO, IIT engineering talent and some $3-5 billion of projected private capital inflows, according to Arkam Ventures’s latest report. If it keeps accelerating at this pace, India’s spacetech sector will be third largest in the world by the end of this decade.

India’s low-cost requirements appears to be giving it a slight edge, especially when it comes to lower earth orbit (LEO) satellite and spacecraft manufacturing which tend to be hardware-oriented and capex intensive. This is reflected in funding sizes too. A US spacetech would typically raise $10 million at seed, while a similar startup in India could raise less than $5 million, said one Indian startup stakeholder.

It is still early days, and India will have to prove that it can pull its weight.

All eyes will be on Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket launch later this year — a potential bellwether event as India’s first orbital launch vehicle built by a private company. Skyroot has raised about $100 million since its 2018 inception with GIC, Temasek and pi Ventures among its investors.

Meanwhile in Singapore, a tiny Asian city with towering sovereign coffers and world-class universities, plans are underway to set up its first space agency on April 1, signaling an upgrade in national priorities for the once fledgling sector.

The Southeast Asian port city is leaning on its existing strengths as a hub for aerospace, microelectronics, precision engineering and AI to build and partner for the sector. According to a recent speech by Singapore’s Minister of Energy and Science and Technology, Tan See Leng, future investments will focus on:

• Climate and sustainability: Satellite remote sensing for carbon monitoring

• Space sustainability: Space situational awareness, approaches to debris remediation

• Microgravity research in space: Novel therapeutics to advance human health sciences

Over in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have already been nurturing space programmes and agencies since the 2010s with projects going back to the 1990s. Both have completed missions and even sent astronauts to space.

The aspirational element certainly plays an influential role — something foreigners tend to chuckle disdainfully at as vanity projects (which isn’t totally wrong), but their motivations are quite different here.

Economic diversification is a key goal for the oil-dependent GCC. Building a national space industry requires local talent. You groom this talent by emphasising on STEM education, inspiring Arab youth to be aerospace engineers and astronauts, so they can contribute to ambitious national projects. It checks the boxes on multiple fronts — oil and gas diversification, tech, job creation, defense, nation-building.

As commercial applications in the global space industry develop, it opens up new arenas for Gulf interest, especially in oil, mining exploration and the surveillance of conflict zones. One source in the spacetech industry told me that both Saudi Arabia and UAE are also keen to develop and build their own sovereign space assets — akin to India developing its space manufacturing supply chain at home.

One of the biggest IPOs to watch in 2026 will be space-related.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed a highly strategic merger with xAI earlier this month, combining a space and defense contractor with an AI developer’s capabilities, set to bolster its data centre ambitions in space to rival Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon’s Anthropic and OpenAI. This blockbuster public offering could value SpaceX at $1.5 trillion, which if successful, will surpass Saudi’s Aramco as the world’s largest IPO in history.

Singapore’s Budget was pretty big this year 👀

• $37 billion allocated to RIE 2030: This is a 32% increase from the last RIE2025 budget. 29% to go into emerging sectors like space, biotech, quantum; $8.9 billion going into NRF, A*STAR and research universities among others

• MAS to inject another $1.5 billion to boost investor participation in Singapore equities. $5 billion was previously injected via the Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP).

• A second $1.5 billion tranche of the Anchor Fund (managed by 65 Equity Partners) aimed at raising Singapore’s attractiveness as a listing destination

• $1 billion set aside for Startup SG Equity scheme: Provides initial capital to catalyse funding for startups

ICYMI:

• Singapore commits record $37 billion to drive research, innovation and enterprise over next five years (Straits Times)

• Singapore Makes Quantum a Pillar of $37 Billion Innovation Strategy (Quantum Insider)

• Singapore equities market to get additional $1.5b boost (Straits Times)

Interesting reads 🤓

• Ares Private Markets Fund: *Ponzicity* (The AltView Substack)

• Is South-east Asia ready for a security-driven nuclear revival? (Business Times)

• $160 Billion Abu Dhabi Fund Eyes Bolder Bets for 10% Returns (Bloomberg)

• Zenyum, MakeO Toothsi to merge, creating Asian consumer dental group (Reuters)

• Who’s Watching Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Watchdog? (Bloomberg)

• Uber’s new buy in Turkey (The Morning Context)

• Canadian pension giant halts deals with DP World over chief’s Jeffrey Epstein ties (Financial Times)

• Saudi to test revised PIF strategy as giga-project funding tightens (AGBI)

• How Ras Al Khaimah became the UAE’s next big thing (The Morning Context)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Saison Capital’s Looi Qin En discusses stablecoins, RWA tokenisation and the shift from founder to investor🎙️💫

QIA expands Fund of Funds programme, welcomes 5 new VCs

The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) is injecting another $2 billion into its 2-year old fund-of-funds (FoF) programme aimed at jumpstarting Qatar’s VC/startup ecosystem while positioning itself as a financial hub to rival Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh. This brings its total allocation to $3 billion.

Here is the full list of all 12 fund names, including the latest 5 VCs they announced this past week:

• Greycroft (Global, multi-stage) - joined Feb 2026

• Ion Pacific (Global, structured secondaries & special situations) - joined Feb 2026

• Liberty City Ventures (Global, blockchain) - joined Feb 2026

• Shorooq (GCC, multi-asset/strategy) - joined Feb 2026

• Speedinvest (Europe/EMEA, multi-stage) - joined Feb 2026

• Founders Circle Capital (US, growth-stage) - joined Dec 2025

• B Capital (Global, multi-stage) - joined Feb 2025

• Deerfield (Healthcare) - joined Feb 2025

• Rasmal Ventures (MENA, multi-stage) - joined Feb 2025

• UTOPIA (Africa/Southeast Asia, impact-focused) - joined Feb 2025

• Builders VC (Early-stage, traditional industries) - joined Feb 2025

• Human Capital (Multi-stage, recruitment/talent-focused) - joined Feb 2025

At a quick glance, you can probably tell that QIA has a strong preference for GPs which are: i) >$1B in AUM; ii) Global and/or with cross-regional mandates; iii) Niche specialists in a particular sector or asset class.

As of December 2025, over half of the initial $1 billion was already deployed into 7 VC firms according to Qatari state media, QNA. (See screengrab below.) If we are to assume that QIA hasn’t deployed in anything else apart from these funds, that would be at least an average of $70 million deployed per fund. That’s pretty hefty (!!)

Gulf SWFs are generally known to attach conditions for investment, including setting up investment offices in their financial hub; domiciling funds locally; ensuring a certain % is deployed directly into local startups…etc

QIA is no exception here.

Most, if not all, of the names above will be opening offices in Doha. However what I do understand is that QIA is comparatively lax (compared to other Gulf SWFs) on requirements to deploy into local startups, because they “understand that Qatar doesn’t have a deep startup pool”.

QIA’s latest $2 billion injection shows that intent is there. But how the KPIs will be finetuned such that Qatar’s local ecosystem benefits from this is clearly a work in progress and will be something to follow closely.

The bulk of talent, infrastructure and operational know-how still sits in the UAE today, given that they’ve had a headstart of several years.

Most stakeholders I’ve spoken with welcome the growing competition between UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But it will ultimately be up to the sovereigns and policymakers to shape the outcome of these goals, many of which will take several years to fully materialise.

High-profile exits continue at Peak XV; Biofourmis CEO charged for fraud

Chaos continues at Peak XV Partners, as the VC firm loses 3 managing partners at one go. According to Indian media reports, this was due to “disagreements over economics and executive payouts”, resulting in Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma walking out within a 7-8 day frame starting with Agrawal’s exit.

Peak XV’s managing partner, Shailendra Singh cited this to be a natural state of affairs given that the VC industry is “prone to people striking out on their own”, but it’s also taking place at a highly critical time. Peak XV is in the midst of finalising a $1.2-1.4 billion fund — its first major independent fundraise since its historic split from Sequoia Capital in 2023.

The departing trio hold board seats in around 40 Peak XV portfolio companies, with Agrawal responsible for Groww’s latest IPO which has delivered over 60x paper gains for the VC firm. LPs will naturally be asking questions about its ability to continue this performance as more and more of Peak’s long-time partners and investors call it quits.

Those who have left in the last 2-3 years include Piyush Gupta, Abheek Anand, Anandamoy Roychowdhary, Shailesh Lakhani, Harshjit Sethi, Pieter Kemps among others.

Peak XV’s growth funds today are helmed by Shailendra J Singh, GV Ravishankar and Mohit Bhatnagar. While Singh has been based in Singapore and is increasingly spending time in the US to focus on AI bets, Ravishankar relocated to Dubai a few years ago and is in the process of moving back to Bengaluru. Bhatnagar is based in New Delhi. Rajan Anandan takes care of its very early stage program Surge. (Source: Money Control)

In other fun news…

Biofourmis’s former CEO, Rajput Kuldeep Singh has been charged in Singapore courts for falsification of accounts, fraud by false representation and forgery. It marks the latest in a long string of startup embarrassments, alongside eFishery, Zilingo, Tanihub, Investree, Spenmo…

According to The Straits Times, Singh had allegedly instigated his staff to falsify $20 million in company invoices related to Biofourmis’s Biovitals Sentinel platform. An ESOP offer letter was also forged by Singh aimed at cheating DBS Bank into transferring funds.

Biofourmis last raised a $300 million Series D led by General Atlantic in 2022 which valued it at $1.3 billion. Among the firm’s investors are SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Peak XV Partners, EDBI, Openspace Ventures, MassMutual Ventures and Intel Capital. In 2024, Biofourmis completed an all-stock merger with CopilotIQ, an American remote health monitoring company.

Singh then sold his shares to launch OutcomesAI in Boston, an AI-enabled nurse infrastructure, which secured a partnership with Singapore public healthcare provider Singhealth.

Interesting reads 🤓

• SpaceX buys xAI in $1.25tn deal to unite crucial parts of Elon Musk’s empire (Financial Times)

• Governments’ New Must-Have: Their Own Satellites (WSJ)

• Singapore to set up national space agency on April 1 to develop and run space capabilities (Straits Times)

• Trump to Launch $12 Billion Critical Mineral Stockpile to Blunt Reliance on China (Bloomberg)

• Inside Moltbook: The social network where AI agents talk to each other (Financial Times)

• Private Equity’s Giant Software Bet Has Been Upended by AI (Bloomberg)

• Tencent exits JD.com, Meituan to go all in on AI (DealStreetAsia)

• China AI Deals Push Hong Kong Listings to Busiest Start of the Year (Bloomberg)

• Asia needs a sustained stock rally to woo private equity: LGT Capital Partners (DealStreetAsia)

• Indonesia’s opaque stock market risks $60bn outflow (Nikkei Asia)

• Y Combinator reaps big rewards in India but its future in Asia is long over (Asia Tech Review Substack)

• I see dead VCs (Elizabeth Beezer Clarkson)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Saison Capital’s Looi Qin En discusses stablecoins, RWA tokenisation and the shift from founder to investor🎙️💫

Keeping up with the Gulf SWFs

Plenty of movement among the Gulf sovereigns this week.

The first and probably biggest development is L'imad’s takeover of Abu Dhabi fellow ADQ. The combined entity is estimated to the tune of $300 billion in AUM, consolidating stakes across power, utilities, commodities and transportation firms like TAQA, Louis Dreyfus, Abu Dhabi Ports, Etihad Airways and G42/Core42.

It also places the new entity under the leadership of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan — the eldest son of UAE President Sheikh Mohammed. He was named crown prince in 2023.

"With this move, Sheikh Khaled is being elevated alongside his uncles to manage a significant portfolio," Global SWF Managing Director Diego Lopez told Reuters. (Source: Reuters)

The former ADQ chief, Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, has in the meantime moved to head Lunate, which has interests in private equity, venture capital, private credit, real assets, public equities and credit markets. Lunate has $115 billion in AUM. Its anchor investor is ADQ.

So for simplicity’s sake today:

L’imad > ADQ > Lunate

This isn’t even including the other SWFs like ADIA and Mubadala (all in just Abu Dhabi alone) but let’s not confuse ourselves further here…

L’imad practically sprung out of nowhere last December after it threw its name in the ring for Paramount’s $108 billion bid for Warner Bros. ADQ by comparison, hasn’t been around for that long either. The Abu Dhabi state holding company was formed in 2018.

One of the most consistent complaints I get from fund managers is how difficult it is to keep up with Middle East SWFs and LPs, and the above development is yet another case in point.

In addition to the Gulf’s constellation of entities forming and fading almost overnight, the managers in these firms move around too, which makes it doubly hard for foreign fundraising GPs to build relationships and follow through.

I guess change is the constant here in the Gulf…

ICYMI:

• Newsletter #20: How to keep up with Middle East sovereign funds? (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

• Newsletter #24: Gulf SWFs in transition; Southeast Asia (still) is an emerging market (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

• Newsletter #17: Temasek, KIA, MGX join AI infra fund; How to resolve family feuds in Dubai (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

BECO Capital exits then re-invests in Property Finder

Another Gulf tech headline this week was a pretty mega piece of fundraising news from Property Finder. The UAE real estate platform has raised another $170 million (a mega round too, no less!) just months after announcing not one, but two rounds of financing in 2025.

• Sept 2025: $525 million, led by Permira & Blackstone Growth. General Atlantic did a partial exit

• Oct 2025: $250 million in debt, Ares Credit funds

• Jan 2026: $170 million led by Mubadala Investment Company ($75m), joined by a UAE SWF ($75m) and BECO Capital ($20m)

Perhaps the first and most obvious is that Property Finder has closed nearly $950 million in funds in less than a year, which I guess is always handy at a time when cash is generally hard to come by.

Its key rival Dubizzle on the other hand, tried to raise something similar in IPO markets last year but had to pull back, so I expect Property Finder to be spending its way to widen and deepen its market share across MENA.

But the real interesting bit was snuck inside the press release about BECO Capital. It appears that they’ve returned to the cap table, but this time through a new growth fund.

“BECO Capital will invest $20 million from its newly launched $250 million Growth Fund I, its first deployment, deepening a partnership with Property Finder that began more than a decade ago, when BECO was the company’s first venture capital investor.” (Source: Property Finder, Jan 2026)

The UAE-based early-stage VC co-founded by Dany Farha had fully exited Property Finder back in 2024 via a founder share buyback from a $90 million debt facility raised from Francisco Partners.

But roughly a year after exiting the company, Property Finder raised $525 million from Permira and Blackstone, which must make for an interesting case of FOMO for having “left too soon”…

There are a lot of things to say about early-stage VCs launching growth funds when times are good (didn’t turn out so well in Southeast Asia) but I guess everyone has to bite their own bullets. Even in a worst case scenario, you still receive 2% fees every year for 10 years and put food on the table. What’s there not to like?

BECO’s secondary exit has been repeatedly quoted by Gulf VCs and startups as one of the rare, more sophisticated exits in MENA, but it’s a transaction that would have only worked had the startup’s financials made sense.

Property Finder was and still is a cashflow positive business, which has given the firm room to explore a wider array of financial tools to engineer such a deal. As for Gulf VCs, creative success stories like these will be needed as the pressure to return DPI to LPs continues to grow.

Let’s hope we see more of them.

Interesting reads 🤓

• Metals surge boosts value of mining groups by almost $500bn (Financial Times)

• SpaceX weighs June IPO timed to planetary alignment and Elon Musk’s birthday (Financial Times)

• Abu Dhabi’s newest SWF takes control of peer ADQ in major wealth reshuffle (Reuters)

• Neom restructure part of Saudi’s Vision 2030 shake-up (AGBI)

• Asia back as priority region for LPs: Coller Capital report (DealStreetAsia)

• Mubadala Capital raises $550M for debut co-investment fund (Semafor)

• Singapore CEO Who Maxed Out 65 Credit Cards Spurs $1 Billion IPO Windfall (Bloomberg)

• PH sovereign Marhalika Fund to step up capital deployment this year (DealStreetAsia)

• Liquidity returns to Singapore market as rally spreads beyond blue chips (Straits Times)

Reports:

• Global M&A Report 2026 (Bain & Co)

• India’s Space Odyssey 2026 (Arkam Ventures)

• Southeast Asia food delivery GMV grew 18% to hit $22.7B in 2025 (Momentum Works)

• SEAsia venture funding levels off after multi-year pullback (DealStreetAsia)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Saison Capital’s Looi Qin En discusses stablecoins, RWA tokenisation and the shift from founder to investor🎙️💫

Breaking down UAE’s “digital embassy” launch

An intriguing announcement was made by Abu Dhabi’s G42 earlier this week about the launch of its “digital embassies” framework and Greenshield:

“...a new sovereign operating model that enables nations to deploy artificial intelligence secure and at scale while maintaining full authority and control over their data, systems and policies regardless of where infrastructure is located.” (Source: G42 press release)

But what is a digital embassy? And how would exporting an operating model to another nation (for AI and data-handling) make it sovereign…at all?

As it turns out, G42’s leadership team was too busy in Davos to answer this journalist’s questions urgently, so what else can one do but pester your smart deeptech friends and dig around for answers…

Here’s a definition for you:

A digital embassy is a sovereign, state-controlled digital environment—typically hosted on foreign or cloud infrastructure—that is legally and technically protected to function as an extension of a country’s territory.

It hosts critical data belonging to a nation-state and its citizens, which may include digital identity, land and health records, business and taxation permits, licenses and other government databases.

The model was first conceived by Estonia, a former Soviet nation and pioneer of government in the cloud. It aggressively digitised its records in the 2000s and launched its first digital embassy in Luxembourg in 2017.

Digital embassies tend to fit a specific profile of nations — usually small (in population and land mass) with centralised bureaucracies and systems, and a history of adversarial relationships or on the receiving end of cyberattacks from its larger and more powerful neighbours.

For instance, in the event of a foreign attack, a digital embassy will allow Estonia to retain and quickly restore its government systems, registries and data, thereby preserving the state’s sovereignty and survival.

It underscores a wider evolution taking place around the definition of sovereignty. Historically, sovereignty was always tied to physical territory, country borders and the people who live and work on it.

Today, it’s also about the data and code.

In other words, it’s also about the millions of national IDs, land registries, health and bank records which would be extremely valuable for any malicious foreign actor to get their hands on.

Apart from Estonia and Monaco (which both have existing digital embassies in Luxembourg today), Switzerland, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are also said to be exploring it as well.

For now at least, the UAE appears to be exploring digital embassies with one of its oldest neighbouring allies — India.

The “Digital Embassies Initiative” was announced on the back of UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nayan’s state visit to the country earlier this week, with the latter reportedly courting nations to digital embassies up in Gujarat’s GIFT city, also a bourgeoning finance hub for India’s top funds.

G42 has also taken the opportunity to launch Greenshield, which would logically be the operating layer for UAE’s digital embassy project in India (or anywhere else in the world it chooses).

Here is G42’s official definition of it:

Greenshield is the operational layer implemented by Core42, G42’s digital infrastructure arm, that translates sovereign policy into execution. It applies consistent sovereign controls across environments, governing identity and access, data handling, security, compliance, auditability, and continuity.

With Greenshield, sovereignty remains intact even as workloads move across different cloud and infrastructure configurations, ensuring control is preserved as systems scale and evolve.

“Greenshield is implemented through Core42’s heterogeneous AI Cloud, a mesh of sovereign compute and cloud environments already deployed across multiple geographies, including sovereign AI clusters in North America, Europe and the UAE.

When coupled with the government-to-government agreements, Greenshield introduces technical and policy controls that enable governments to run accelerated AI workloads with sovereign controls regardless of where the infrastructure is located.” said Talal Al Kaissi, Interim CEO of Core42 and Group Chief Global Affairs Officer at G42.

This is very much aligned with G42/Core42’s key objectives, which is to develop and sell sovereign solutions in AI, cloud and infrastructure for governments and enterprises. Naturally, one would expect UAE to roll such products out to its key allies first.

One thing I’ll be curious to see is how a digital embassy strategy would sit side-by-side with launching data centres in outer space — something Elon Musk is already championing via Starlink.

The world’s needs for power generation and cooling are obviously more urgent right now, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine a digital embassy in outer space too if data centres are in talks to go up soon…

ICYMI:

• G42 pitches digital embassy plan to foreign governments (Semafor)

• Understanding Digital Embassies: How India and UAE are exploring secure data hubs, Al collaboration, and global digital infrastructure (Times of India)

• How data centres in space sustainably enable the AI revolution (WEF)

Interesting reads 🤓

• ‘A Rupture in the World Order’: Mark Carney’s speech at Davos 2026

• Data centres in 2026: Where things are heading (Clearly Tech Substack)

• Hainan breaks apart the Hong Kong-Singapore two-hub model (Nikkei Asia)

• India to boost surveillance satellites after Pakistan conflict (Bloomberg)

• SGX proposes reducing lot sizes to make trading more affordable (Straits Times)

• ASEAN’s AI startups focus on profitability amid funding bubble fears (Nikkei Asia)

• Airwallex buys South Korea’s Paynuri after fundraising at $8 billion valuation (Reuters)

• The GCC IPO boom has ended. The outlook for 2026 is mixed (Matein’s Substack)

• Economists unfazed as Saudi Arabia’s debt rises again (AGBI)

• Jerusalem VC looks to ‘go bigger’ in Dubai, post-Gaza (Semafor)

• Solar power eclipses fintech as Africa’s new investment magnet (Bloomberg)

• False Precision: How Business Consultants Monetise the Measurement of Poverty (The Dark Side of Development Substack)

• Embryo Selection: A Guide for the Curious (Quillette)

Reports:

• 2025 Digital Health in MEA Report (Global Ventures)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

Saison Capital’s Looi Qin En discusses stablecoins, RWA tokenisation and the shift from founder to investor🎙️💫

Mal Bank raises MENA’s largest seed round of $230 million

If there was anything that signaled “capital excess” in MENA this week, it would probably be Mal Bank. The Abu Dhabi-based Islamic finance digibank, started by former AstraTech and Botim founder Abdallah Abu-Sheikh, closed $230 million in seed funding led by BlueFive Capital.

It’s the largest seed round that MENA has ever seen, which should be enough to raise eyebrows until you discover that the company hasn’t launched a product and hasn’t secured a bank license, which then begs the question how and why a company needs this much money at this stage of growth?

Mal Bank has global ambitions. According to a TV interview that Abu-Sheikh gave on CNBC, Mal Bank aims to bring Islamic finance to markets outside of the UAE, including Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. He added that the fintech is also in conversations with regulators from these markets. 👀

This more or less confirms a hunch I have about Mal.

My guess: The Abu Dhabi fintech may be pursuing a roll-up of licensed fintechs and banks across emerging Asia and Gulf — ie: you snap up fintechs and banks on the cheap, develop the underlying tech in-house, then re-package it as a larger Global South business in hopes of selling it to some large US/European financial institution with a “weak presence” in emerging markets.

Sounds like a good idea…in theory? The M&A playbook isn’t new for Mal’s founder, Abdallah Abu-Sheikh. The Jordanian pursued a similar strategy at AstraTech, albeit arguably at a much smaller scale, involving the acquisitions of UAE fintechs and on-demand platforms Rizek, PayBy and BOTIM.

I’m not sure if acquiring banks in emerging markets is going to be any less straightforward. Getting overseas M&As past the finish line can often be multi-year affairs, especially when it concerns banks, which will be fraught with compliance and regulatory hurdles.

Then there are also the capital requirements for setting these banks up.

In the UAE, licensed banks need to maintain a minimum paid-up capital of anywhere between AED 300 million and AED 2 billion ($81.7 million and $544.6 million) depending on the license category you’re under. (See screengrabs below.)

For overseas markets like in Indonesia, this goes up to IDR 10 trillion ($592 million), with a minimum 30% ($177.6 million) of the paid-up capital to be deposited with an Indonesian bank upon license application. (See screengrabs far below.)

Article 12

“The paid-in capital to establish Bank BHI is set at a minimum of Rp10,000,000,000,000.00 (ten trillion rupiah).

OJK may determine a paid-in capital for the establishment of Bank BHI that is different from that stipulated as referred to in paragraph (1) based on certain considerations.”

Article 26

Provisions regarding the establishment of a BHI Bank as referred to in Articles 11 through 22 shall apply mutatis mutandis to the establishment of a new BHI Bank that will operate as a Digital Bank as referred to in Article 25 letter a, except as specifically regulated in this OJK Regulation.

The special arrangements referred to in paragraph (1) are as follows:
a. the capital deposit at the time of the application to obtain the principle approval for the establishment of a BHI Bank as referred to in Article 15 paragraph (1) letter i may be fulfilled at a minimum of 30% (thirty percent); and
b. the efforts to meet the requirements as referred to in Article 24 shall be included in the business plan as referred to in Article 15 paragraph (1) letter e.

All of a sudden, Mal Bank’s $230 million doesn’t seem like a lot of money…?

The waiting time for a bank license can be anywhere between 9-12 months to several years, depending on the market. So until then, Mal Bank will likely focus on rolling out a series of unlicensed-but-permissible fintech products, which Abu Sheikh has already said it will begin doing so by Q2 this year.

Launching an AI-native fintech today (or AI anything for that matter) should require way less money and time given the proliferation of AI developer tools, so one can hope and assume that Mal Bank will take the accelerated, ultra-lean GTM route for product development instead of hiring excessively or splurging on marketing gimmicks, but what do I know…

A few of you (subscribers of this Substack) have brought up the likelihood that the $230 million may not be capital upfront but capital tranched to milestone KPIs which is completely possible. Frankly it makes a lot more sense, and I’m sure any sensible investor would request the same.

What do you think about Mal Bank? I’d love to hear your thoughts too :)

Interesting reads 🤓

• Stablecoin Narrow Banking (Matt Levine Opinion Newsletter)

• Singapore Exchange offers crypto futures for ‘advanced’ traders (Nikkei Asia)

• Private equity backers offload record amount of old fund stakes (Financial Times)

• Beijing looms large over Singapore-based Manus’ deal with Meta (Straits Times)

• Atome secures $345 million debt facility for Southeast Asia expansion (Reuters)

• Malaysian crypto data platform CoinGecko weighs sale for around $500 million, sources say (Coindesk)

• 1 in 3 Japan stocks trade below book value (Nikkei Asia)

• Abu Dhabi crown prince to chair new sovereign entity (AGBI)

• EWPartners aims to close $800m Saudi fund (AGBI)

• Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund preps for a wave of IPOs (Semafor)

• Temu’s UAE growth points to rise in value retail (AGBI)

• Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund preps for a wave of IPOs (Semafor)

• Saudi Arabia opens $1bn theme park as kingdom pushes ahead with megaprojects (Financial Times)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

3x exited founder Dipendra Jain joins us on The Upside Podcast to discuss his latest crypto infrastructure startup, Brokk🎙️💫

Manus AI: Has Singapore’s VC startup experiment paid off?

I return to Singapore and the first piece of startup news to hit headlines was Manus AI — the Chinese-not-so-Singaporean AI firm acquired by Meta for a very impressive $2 billion. This is one of Meta’s larger AI investments of late, with the more notable one being its ~$15 billion investment in Scale AI in June 2025.

Manus AI is an investment on the app layer, compared to Meta’s prior attention towards models. (Scale AI for instance, focuses on data annotation, validation and evaluation of AI models.)

Lots of impressive things have been said about Manus. The firm launched in Beijing and raised from Chinese investors, Tencent, ZhenFund and Hongshan Capital (formerly Sequoia Capital China). One month later, it raised from Benchmark Capital and moved to Singapore. The firm launched, scaled and exited in 9 months. By the time it exited, Manus had already reached ~$125 million in ARR.

Grace Shao has done a tremendous job dissecting the Manus AI acquisition deal from the US/China lens on her Substack, I recommend reading it.

From the Singapore POV, sentiments have been a little more conflicted. The story of “Singapore washing” isn’t new, but one can’t help but wonder when you look at the number of Chinese coffee/milk tea chains, mala hotpot, TikTok beauty and kitchen appliance brands sprouting across the island where exactly it’s all heading?

One part of this tragedy is the sheer number of people who can’t bring themselves to genuinely celebrate it because, you know, it was just the biggest tech exit Singapore has seen in recent history, right? laughs in self pity

Kristie: So what’s happening in Singapore these days? Oh yes that Manus AI deal, that’s huge!

Singapore investor: Kristie, nobody cares

Kristie: Nobody cares? :(( </3 </3

Yes, because not a single Southeast Asian investor made any money from this deal.

There are some big questions Singapore and its state-backed investors need to ask themselves in 2026. One of them being — what exactly was the ROI on the millions and billions of dollars ploughed into the PE/VC startup industry in the last 1-2 decades? Has it paid off? Was it all worth it?

Were the financial and reputational hits in the last few years enough to bring us into the next decade? And after all that, will we still commit to take more risk? Will we choose to be more creative?

No straightforward answers there. For now, I guess it’s still a TBC.

ICYMI:

• Meta Buys AI Startup Manus for More Than $2 Billion (WSJ)

• Mens et Manus, the story of Manus. Its brains and hands (Grace Shao’s Substack)

• Computer scientist Yann LeCun: ‘Intelligence really is about learning’ (Financial Times)

• As global scrutiny grows, Chinese firms look to call Singapore home (Reuters)

• Jianggan Li: China Brands Invasion, Stealth M&A Trojan Horses & Darwinian Competition (Brave Southeast Asia Tech Podcast with Jeremy Au)

• GIC and Temasek’s performance, IP rider changes on the agenda when Parliament sits on Jan 12 (Straits Times)

Back in Singapore! It’s nice to be home + 2026 subscriber updates 💫

Flew back over Christmas and it’s been really nice to be home. Needless to say, I have only been wolfing down Asian hawker food ever since. Also did I mention that Singapore has a great cocktail bar scene? Puh!

Other personal updates: I also became a Koko (aunt) this past week. So yes, life is wonderful :)

What’s coming up in 2026?

2026 is going to be an exciting year for this Substack and platform.

The subscriber base (free and paid) has grown, with the bulk of you now coming from Asia and the Gulf. The audience segment is the same — LPs, GPs, startup ecosystem folks across the global emerging markets from Middle East, Africa, India, Southeast Asia to LATAM.

Because a lot of these are low-trust markets, the demand for exclusive, thoughtful editorial content + meaningful connections will continue to be high. This is the value-add I hope to bring to many of you this year.

One of the more immediate things I’m focusing on right now is creating more value for paid subscribers. Many of you were already following my work from DealStreetAsia. This platform would not have been possible without your financial support, thank you 🙏🏼

There are a few new things in the pipeline which I will share in coming weeks. Stay tuned! 💫

I will also be widening the gap between what free and paid subscribers get over time.

If you have been a free subscriber and like what you’ve been seeing so far, do consider upgrading to a paid subscription! It’s also possible to sponsor an amount of your choosing through a simple pledge of support as well.

Subscribe now

Until then, I’ll be seeing you again very soon ;)

Interesting reads 🤓

• How Silicon Valley will eat its AI competitors in 2026 (Bloomberg)

• Singapore should back unproven, young talent (It’s Not That Deep Substack)

• Passing the torch From West to East: Health, a Political Choice (Kishore Mahbubani’s Substack)

• McDonald’s rival Jollibee soars on plan to list global unit (Bloomberg)

• Ares seals deal to buy Northstar’s business in another Asia push (DealStreetAsia)

• Indonesia Tightens Grip on Resources with Switzerland-Sized Land Grab (Bloomberg)

• How Southeast Asia’s tech majors are rethinking scale in 2026 (DealStreetAsia)

• Saudi to open capital markets to all foreigners after Tasi drop (AGBI)

• Gulf explores small modular reactors to meet energy needs (AGBI)

• Flutterwave buys Nigeria’s Mono in rare African fintech exit (TechCrunch)

• Coinbase says three areas will dominate the crypto market in 2026 (Coindesk)

• The $16 trillion unlock: Why 2026 is when trapped capital breaks free (Jordi Visser Substack)

Reports:

• 2026 Crypto Market Outlook (Coinbase)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

3x exited founder Dipendra Jain joins us on The Upside Podcast to discuss his latest crypto infrastructure startup, Brokk🎙️💫

Gulf SWFs drive dealmaking amid global M&A slowdown

M&A activity in the GCC has defied global trends in 2025 thanks to their SWFs, according to a recent A&O Shearman report. Deal value and deal transactions (up to Dec 1) were up 170% and 2.6% respectively year-on-year to $72.7 billion and 554 transactions. (See charts below.)

The UAE and Saudi Arabia were the key drivers, with mega acquisitions taking place across energy, infrastructure, technology and financial services. SWFs are also pursuing more control positions compared to minority passive deals previously, added the report.

Some notable deals include Saudi PIF’s $55 billion acquisition of videogame developer Electronic Arts with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, and Aramco’s $11 billion lease and buyback of its Jafurah gas processing business to a consortium of investors led by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).

Tech and market access remains the dominant theme when it comes to GCC-US transactions. At the same time, Gulf SWFs are also leveraging their strategic neutrality to pursue M&A opportunities in China and co-investments with regional SWFs and APAC asset managers.

A&O Shearman also did a very interesting podcast discussion with Global SWF’s Diego Lopez where they discussed several key trends in the global and Gulf SWF space.

Here are some of my takeaways:

• Gulf SWFs are becoming increasingly sophisticated investors, taking structured, tailored approaches to achieve strategic objectives

• Gulf SWFs are no longer passive investors when it comes to PE. They’re also becoming co-investors and direct investors. This is leading to a blurring of lines between LPs and GPs

• New trends to watch: Growing of AUM, more collaborative investing, more hybrid vehicles

• There has been an increase in bespoke structures and separate managed accounts (SMAs) by Gulf SWFs. These are dedicated pools with tailored terms, which may be staple co-investment rights, options for investment top-ups, priority allocations. These are focused on priority sectors like AI, advanced tech, infrastructure, energy transition, and logistics. Gulf SWFs are doing this to scale and deploy more quickly.

• SWFs are growing their teams internationally, opening new offices overseas like US, France, India, China. Others like Singapore’s Temasek and their subsidiaries are also opening offices in the Gulf.

I’ve taken the liberty to transcribe the full podcast in a separate post, in case some of you are interested! Check it out here.

Interesting reads 🤓

• Apollo cuts risk and stockpiles cash in preparation for market turmoil (Financial Times)

• Tech groups shift $120bn of AI data centre debt off balance sheets (Financial Times)

• HKeX, one of the world’s hottest IPO markets shows signs of weakness (Financial Times)

• Coinbase agrees to buy The Clearing Company to deepen prediction markets push (Coindesk)

• How China Inc. Is Discovering Its New World in Brazil (Caixin Global)

• Can India build quantum computers that matter globally? (Asia Tech Lens Substack)

• General Atlantic acquires majority stake in Indonesia’s Sociolla (DealStreetAsia)

• Abu Dhabi SWF Adic to focus on private credit and core infrastructure next year (AGBI)

• KKR’s first Saudi deal signals private credit rush (Semafor)

• UAE lays out rules to regulate gambling industry (AGBI)

Taking a break for 2025! 🗓️

Newsletter and stories will resume on the week of 5 Jan. See you in the new year! 👋🏼

3x exited founder Dipendra Jain joins us on The Upside Podcast to discuss his latest crypto infrastructure startup, Brokk🎙️💫

Race, diversity and talent in the UAE vs Singapore

The lack of IPO/M&A exits is a key question for the MENA market for all the reasons we’re quite familiar with.

1. Not enough growth-stage investors

2. Local stock exchanges are illiquid

3. Exited founders haven’t recycled/re-invested in the local ecosystem

Number 1 and 2 are areas that policymakers can artificially correct through various means whether their sovereign-linked funds or regulatory bodies, but I wonder if enough MENA tech founders have personally re-invested their monies and time into the local ecosystem?

I could be completely wrong about this, but I’ve met quite a few founders who have bemoaned the lack of talent/angel cheque recycling in MENA. “Careem led one of the region’s largest exits, but where is Mudassir Sheikha now? Why isn’t he spending time with founders and giving back?”

No one seems to know.

One characteristic of the UAE is that because this is a country with so much demographic dispersion, it doesn’t possess the unifying effect of nationalism which tends to bring out the winners and get those winners to re-invest.

You usually see this in more populous countries — Indians investing in Indian startups, Chinese investing in Chinese tech, Indonesians investing in Indonesian companies…etc, but this dynamic doesn’t seem to exist in the UAE. Not yet anyway.

It’s important because every ecosystem needs its own set of heroes.

For all the racial diversity that you see here (which is vast and incredible), I’ve been intrigued at how tech conferences and meet-ups would often be organised along racial lines — Arabs, Africans, Slavic/Russians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis…etc. The bigger the diaspora, the better.

I read an interesting account of Kevin Xu’s first visit to the UAE, who had similar curiosities about the Emirati view on attracting diverse talent into the country.

Whether it is the UAE or elsewhere, a country needs to attract both more lower-end workers to construct and higher-skilled talent to make good use of what is being constructed. And to make it all sustainable, everyone has to live among each other in peace, safety, and relative comfort. Achieving that level of talent density necessitates human “inclusivity”, which has become a bizarrely toxic and divisive notion in recent years.

How does the UAE plan to achieve both talent density and inclusivity in its own way? A phrase we heard a few times during our trip was an “inclusive representative tribal system”. In other words: everyone is welcome, come as you are, as long as you live within the boundaries and traditions of the Emirati culture.

An “inclusive representative tribal system” couldn’t be a more Emirati way of describing it…I also think this is one of the slight distinctions between the Singapore and UAE when it comes to ethnicity and race.

While both countries promote diversity and inclusion, one actually has it at the heart of its own citizenry (Singaporean Chinese, Indians, Malays, Eurasians etc), while Emiratis consider themselves a separate tribe living peacefully alongside “foreign tribes” of other nations.

I suspect this leads to subtle differences around the way migrant tech talent interact and build here, but that’s probably a post for another day…

Interesting reads 🤓

• Prediction markets and the casino mentality of 2025 (Financial Times)

• Trading by Algorithm: Who is Responsible When AI Calls the Shots? (Caixin Global)

• Cambridge Associates Calls on LPs to Slow Commitments to Seed Funds (WSJ Pro)

• Hong Kong, India Fuel Blockbuster Year for Asia Fundraising (Bloomberg)

• Rocket Internet accused of marking down start-up stakes to ease buyouts (Financial Times)

• Saudi Sisters Wielding $50 Billion Connect Wall Street to Riyadh (Bloomberg)

• Mideast Amazon rival noon raises $500M (Semafor)

• UAE seeks chip sovereignty with design-only approach (AGBI)

• Fund managers pause Saudi investments amid growth concerns (Semafor)

• Mubadala launches $500m real estate debt partnership with Barings (AGBI)

• Most Indian customers favor affordability over convenience: Meesho founder (Nikkei Asia)

• Temasek’s biotech VC arm pushes AI for medical breakthrough (Nikkei Asia)

• SG maritime electrification startup Pyxis raises $10m (DealStreetAsia)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

3x exited founder Dipendra Jain joins us on The Upside Podcast to discuss his latest crypto infrastructure startup, Brokk🎙️💫

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala to double Asia allocation in next 5-10 years

Mubadala wants to double its portfolio exposure to Asia over the next 5 to 10 years, shared its Asia head, Mohamed Albadr in Abu Dhabi this week.

“Asia is probably about 12-13% of Mubadala’s $330 billion of assets under management. In the next 5 to 10 years, we would love to see that double. We’d like to use a multi-strategy approach, whether it’s through private equity, infrastructure, real estate, or through our endowment model, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and their portfolio,’ said Albadr at Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

He added that China will be the centrepiece of its portfolio allocation in Asia, with India, Japan and South Korea as other key drivers for Mubadala due to their strong GDP growth, PE market depth, maturity, and exit possibilities.

The UAE and China invests out of a bilateral fund launched in 2015 called UAE-China Joint Investment Cooperation Fund, which Mubadala acts as co-sponsor. Since then, the Abu Dhabi sovereign has continued to actively invest in Chinese life sciences, pharma, real estate sectors.

In August 2024, Mubadala fully acquired the carve-out of UCB’s Pharma business in China for $680 million. The deal was conducted with China’s CBC Group and covered its neurology and allergy medicines portfolio, as well as UCB’s manufacturing site in Zhuhai.

“China is the big and centerpiece of our portfolio when it comes to Asia. Today we have an office in Beijing. We have 35 staff members. We also have a joint venture office in Hong Kong. That’s a market where there’s going to be a lot of structural reform that takes place,” added Albadr.

His statements were shared during a stage panel with Temasek CEO Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara and the newly appointed CEO of Seviora Holdings, Gabriel Lim at Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

Temasek and Seviora similarly emphasised the growing importance of the Gulf-Asia corridor, citing rising plurilateralism among the trends driving regions like the Middle East, Asia and others closer to each other.

Seviora Holdings, a full subsidiary of Temasek with assets of over $72 billion (as of November 2025), opened its first Middle East office in Abu Dhabi in March this year. Temasek Holdings does not have a presence in the region, but was previously reported to be urging its Singapore portfolio to buy, strike partnerships or conduct joint ventures in the region.

I have transcribed the full interview (Mubadala, Temasek, Seviora) for paid subscribers only. You may see it at the bottom of this newsletter.

Apollo’s LNG buyout venture with Abu Dhabi falls apart

This one sounds messy. So just a year ago, US private equity firm Apollo and Abu Dhabi LNG giant Adnoc set up XRG, an $80 billion buyout vehicle focused on gas, chemicals and low-carbon energy businesses.

It looks like the partnership has been called off. According to Semafor, XRG’s board met at Blackstone’s offices in New York in September. Blackstone president Jon Gray, is a board member of XRG and was present at that meeting.

Gray voiced concerns — ultimately echoed by other directors — that XRG wasn’t an asset manager and that the fund went beyond its mandate as an operator of energy and chemical assets, the people said. Plans for the fund were scrapped. (Source: Semafor)

LOL? How does Blackstone and Apollo sign off on a multi-billion JV with an influential Abu Dhabi LNG producer only to discover along the way that XRG “wasn’t an asset manager”? Rightttttttt

Obviously there are a ton of reasons why partnerships fail and one can draw all kinds of speculations. But somewhere between a Middle East sovereign backed gas giant and a global PE fundraising crunch, one can roughly guess which side holds the leverage here.

Calling any partnership quits is an extremely costly affair and is usually the least preferred route. So if this is indeed true, I cannot imagine either party to be taking this lightly.

XRG had already committed nearly $30 billion across various deals over the past year, including a gas joint venture with BP in Egypt, LNG projects in Texas and Mozambique, and an Azerbaijan gas pipeline, reported the FT citing Dealogic data.

A leadership reshuffle was underway as recently as last month, but perhaps somewhere, somehow, something didn’t click.

All through 2025, we’ve seen many Middle East sovereigns and their state-backed funds like PIF, QIA, Lunate, MGX sign major partnerships with US PEs and funds. The latest new fund vehicle is Abu Dhabi’s L’imad, among the many funds backing Paramount’s hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

I’ve written about this before, but it will be worth watching to see how many will turn into long-lasting active partnerships. Until then, I guess everything is worth a conversation.

ICYMI:

• Newsletter #13: How to make sense of this US dealmaking in the Gulf? (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

• Brookfield and QIA’s Qai form $20 billion JV to invest in AI Infrastructure (Press release)

• Emirates’ ambitions stir rivalries on Wall Street (Semafor)

• Energy dealmaker XRG revamps leadership after $40bn acquisition spree (Financial Times)

Interesting reads 🤓

• SEC Gives OK to Tokenize Some Stocks in Move to Blockchain (Bloomberg)

• Year-end Saudi IPO sprint raises hopes for 2026 (AGBI)

• Saudi prince postpones fund and targets growth-stage tech (AGBI)

• LATAM’s dLocal expansion to Africa rides on the back of Chinese ecommerce boom (Semafor)

• The UAE is outpacing the US as Africa’s investment partner (Semafor)

• Nuclear energy poised to rise sharply in Africa’s power mix: Report (Semafor)

• Canadian pension explores $1b private equity fund stake sale (DealStreetAsia)

• Granite Asia private credit fund makes first close led by Temasek, Khazanah (DealStreetAsia)

• Chemistry AI startup ChemLex scores $45m in Granite Asia-led round (DealStreetAsia)

A ton of AI reports came out this week too:

• The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise 2025 (Menlo Ventures)

• The State of Enterprise AI report 2025 (OpenAI)

• The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation (McKinsey)

• The AI-fintech transformation in the GCC (Roland Berger)

What’s on Linkedin and X:

3x exited founder Dipendra Jain joins us on The Upside Podcast to discuss his latest crypto infrastructure startup, Brokk🎙️💫

ADFW Panel: Bridging Sovereign Capital: Unlocking Gulf-Asia Private Market Potential

What this transcript covers:

• Temasek on the rise of plurilateralism and what it means for sovereign investors

• Mubadala’s views on the growing Gulf-Asia corridor, Asia allocation and strategy

• Seviora’s new Abu Dhabi office and its outlook on the Middle East

This transcript has been edited for brevity.

Read more

Fundraising in the Middle East is not that easy

There is a common misconception that because the Middle East is flush with oil money, the cheques are larger, the sovereigns are less sophisticated and more “dumb”, so raising money here is going to be a walk in the park. Not quite.

Several waves of foreign GPs have passed through Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha these last 4-5 years and you can almost count with your hands the number of funds who have returned home with MENA monies.

For now at least, it is the funds with global reach, a brand name and track record who are best positioned to capture some MENA LP dollars — much to the frustration of the locals.

No Middle East sovereign will put money into a fund manager without demanding some allocation into their local market, and yet these “branded” funds get away with a few throwaway Middle East cheques while jetting around the world to manage their global LPs and portfolio.

“What kind of deal sourcing are they really going to do? They will never do diligence the way we do because we are in this market,” said one local GP.

It’s a familiar complaint. But I think this is going to be the case for a little while longer. Some of these cheques are already sneaking its way into local pre-seed/seed deals, shared one observer. These are primarily US VCs who are way more willing to lead rounds than their MENA counterparts (which works out for founders at the laughing expense of MENA VCs unfortunately).

There is also the challenge of bridging cultural differences.

One longtime consultant in Hong Kong told me he had to train Chinese investors to try (just try!) dipping a piece of their bread in the hummus plate. As it turns out, mainland Chinese don’t like to share food communally because they consider it unhygienic. Obviously, this did not bode well with their new Arab friends.

Over the years, many Chinese have tried to fundraise in the Middle East but many have also given up. To be fair, both groups are culturally very new to each other. Fundraisers often think that it’s all about numbers and performance and while that may be true, oftentimes it’s just as important to get them to actually like you.

Interesting reads 🤓

• Asia’s strong equity deals pipeline to be tested by AI bubble concerns in 2026 (Reuters)

• Moats Before (Gross) Margins Revisited (a16z Substack)

• $1T private companies, AI fundraising and outbound sourcing (Venture Reflections Substack)

• EQT weighs higher charges on large investors thanks to retail cash (Financial Times)

• Saudis Not Afraid to Cancel Costly Vision 2030 Projects (Bloomberg)

• UAE lottery operator launches online casino and betting brands (AGBI)

• Abu Dhabi private equity firm BlueFive looks to consolidate Gulf insurers (Semafor)

• Turkey’s Paribu acquires CoinMENA in $240 million deal (Press release)

• Oil built the modern Middle East. Where is it’s museum? (AGBI)

• Are Singapore’s investment giants being left behind? (Financial Times)

• Temasek-backed Fullerton scales back China private fund operations (Reuters)

• Subtle shifts in Southeast Asia’s PE spark hope for a new era (DealStreetAsia)

• General Atlantic nears $250m Sociolla deal to provide partial exit to early backers (DealStreetAsia)

• Why global funds are rushing to build dedicated India strategies (DealStreetAsia)

3x exited founder Dipendra Jain joins us on The Upside Podcast to discuss his latest crypto infrastructure startup, Brokk🎙️💫

Will 2026 be a strong IPO year?

I’ve been wondering about this for a while.

MENA IPOs haven’t exactly had a spectacular 2025. Talabat and Lulu’s shares have tanked and the highly anticipated Dubizzle IPO got pushed. A recent report by AGBI strikes a more optimistic note for 2026, with the likes of Tabby, Floward, Foodics and others joining the IPO queue.

Over in Southeast Asia, 2025 hasn’t been a shabby year. A recent Deloitte report showed that regional IPO proceeds rose 53% in the first 10.5 months of this year to $5.6 billion.

Two SGX listings in particular took the cake — NTT DC REIT ($824 million raised) and Centurion Accommodation REIT ($597 million). Other notable IPOs include Maynilad Water Services from the Philippines ($583 million) and Vietnam’s Techcom Securities Joint Stock Company ($525 million).

Other new names joining the to-IPO club include Grab-backed Superbank and Ultragreen.ai looking to list on Indonesia’s IDX and Singapore’s SGX respectively.

In the meantime, we’ll see if Singapore’s S$5 billion Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP) will pay off as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) injects some much-needed liquidity into the exchange (via approved managers), while investing in grants, tax exemptions and training intiatives to improve research coverage and price discovery.

And then there’s the latest tie-up with Nasdaq aimed at streamlining a dual-listing process, because which major Singaporean company who would be satisfied with an SGX listing…

But given how frothy US markets have been in 2025, investors may be watching for a US correction next year which if it happens, might foil more IPO timelines for companies in emerging markets…

Let’s see what happens 👀

Kristie’s Weekend Roast 🍗

Got this in my inbox this week. I’m not sure why the UAE and Singapore are even compared side-by-side considering how vastly different their ecosystems are in terms of stage and maturity. Hopefully readers can understand that this isn’t meaningful and is Magnitt’s way of upsell?

To top that, their Southeast Asia data is significantly under-represented. Based on DealStreetAsia’s data, the region’s startups closed $4.14 billion in 9M2025, marking a rebound (not a decline) in value from the same period the year before.

That’s a difference of more than 2x the $1.93 billion reported by Magnitt. So when I see the press run headlines like the ones below (just scroll down), I go shit bonkers

Shoot me. Just shoot me now.

OH WELL. It is what it is

Preference shares aren’t sharia-compliant? 😮

This was an interesting discovery for me.

According to some circles, preference shares aren’t sharia-compliant, and it’s an area which is richly debated among Islamic scholars and (some) financiers in MENA.

The reason for this is because sharia finance emphasises parity, fairness and risk-sharing. In more extreme scenarios, only ordinary shares will be issued. SAFEs are not allowed either.

Obviously this isn’t mainstream or mandatory practice — especially in the UAE, where there are common law jurisdictions at ADGM (Abu Dhabi) and DIFC (Dubai). But if you are raising money from or dealing with traditional investors, families or entrepreneurs (such as those in Saudi Arabia), such requests do come up from time to time.

There are some benefits to tapping the sharia market since it potentially unlocks capital from a different client base. If you are raising from the retail market for instance, sharia-abiding investors might be more willing to subscribe to you. Promoters likewise will market it accordingly as a sharia offering.

But by and large, even if LPs/investors insist on it, there are ways you can “creatively” comply. One method that came up repeatedly was structuring a clause allowing preference shareholders to donate any returns or interest made to zakat (charity).

It did make me wonder if this was the reason why Dubizzle went down the path of issuing preferred ordinary shares to its shareholders? 🤷🏻‍♀️

One long-time Dubai resident explained that this could simply be a function of Dubizzle pre-dating the practice of multi-share class issuance in the UAE.

According to him, a number of UAE’s free trade zone (FTZ) jurisdictions still allow only single share class issuance today. Even the marquee FTZ ones like ADGM and DIFC started allowing multi-class issuance recently, within 10 or so years.

Most UAE investors are quick to point out that such requests aren’t common practice at all, leading many to downplay the material impact of sharia finance on day-to-day business.

However, for those who do take it seriously, it is a whole set of considerations, involving a separate sharia board and advisor/s backed by their preferred Islamic scholars, who will greenlight the entire transaction/structure culminating in an official sharia certificate.

It’s one of those things which probably sounds great in concept, but a lot of extra work for time-pressed dealmakers.

ICYMI:

• Editor’s Letter: OB markers, censorship and all things haram (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

• A detailed breakdown on Dubai’s Dubizzle (Kristie Neo’s Substack)

Interesting reads 🤓

• ‘Our funds are 20 years old’: Limited partners confront VCs’ liquidity crisis (TechCrunch)

• A new private equity escape hatch to get liquidity (The Partners Fund Substack)

• China leapfrogs US in global market for ‘open’ AI models (Financial Times)

• ‘We’re physicists who are also capitalists,’ says IonQ CEO (Financial Times)

• Walujo to step down as Patuwo takes helm at GoTo lifting Grab merger prospects (DealStreetAsia)

• Grab-backed Superbank launches $183m IPO (DealStreetAsia)

• How Shopee’s LATAM strategy reset rests on its Brazil boom (DealStreetAsia)

• Chinese consumer brands flood into Africa as old investment model fades and exports jump 28% (CNBC)

• All Saudi cities open to foreign property buyers in January (AGBI)

• IPO activity tipped to increase in UAE after lacklustre 2025 (AGBI)

Reports:

• APAC datacenters: Navigating the uncertain ROI (Alix Partners)

• AI eats the world, Nov 2025 (Ben Evans)

I have the most awesome conversations from time to time

Special mention! Talent layoffs, startup culture and telling good career stories with Aki Taha🎙️💫

Aki Taha built his recruitment career at some of the world’s leading brands in Silicon Valley and Singapore — Uber, Netflix, Google, Dropbox, Greylock Partners. Today, he runs his own newsletter and consultancy called TalentStories where he discusses all things careers, leadership, AI, remote work, team-building, work trends and more.

You may check it out here.

Aki is a dear friend so I’m obviously very biased but I genuinely thought this was a great recording. Do listen when you get the chance :)

Southeast Asian ride-hailer Grab is investing again

After a prolonged return to profitability, Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing unicorn Grab is finally back in the investing game. A recent Substack report by Asia Tech Review, found that Grab has quietly made 5 startup investments in the self-driving space.

• WeRide: undisclosed investment announced in August with a self-driving car partnership

• Hesai: cornerstone investor in the lidar maker’s $500 million Hong Kong IPO in September

• May Mobility: undisclosed investment in October to bring its autonomous tech to Grab’s fleets

• Momenta: undisclosed investment, confirmed by Grab. The Chinese firm was reportedly valued at $5-6 billion when Tencent, BMW, Temasek, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz invested.

Alongside these investments, it has also struck partnership agreements with Korea’s Autonomous A2Z for self-driving buses, US-based Motional (which works with Uber, Lyft and others) and China’s Zelos (self-driving delivery vehicles).

The deals and partnerships are “​​part of a long-term strategy to lead AV [autonomous vehicle] adoption across Southeast Asia and secure the technology supply chain through strategic partnerships,” Grab said in a statement. (Source: Asia Tech Review Substack)

We’re approaching a bit of a full-circle moment here.

Some of you may recall that Grab previously launched its ventures arm, Grab Ventures back in 2018 (the good days!) to invest in startups. They even ran accelerators to incubate startups in mobility, food and fintech…

The timing for this is understandable.

Grab has started to pull in quarterly profits since Q4 2023. They are no longer rivalling as hard against Gojek (GoTo Group) as before, with the latter in a fix with SoftBank, Peak XV and Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund Danantara about whether or not to merge with Grab.

They have a $5.3 billion cash war chest, so the money can be put to work in strategic areas that will fulfill their ambitions whether in mobility, food delivery, autonomous driving and others.

I actually first heard about Grab’s return to investing when I was back in Singapore a few months ago (Q2 thereabouts?) According to one ex-Grabber, the company had always been quietly investing, but there are some differences this time.

First, Grab’s alumni network has grown sizeable over the years, with several ex-staff starting their own ventures. A number of Grab’s cheques and deal sourcing have been executed via this channel. The problem now is that there are so many deals coming through but Grab doesn’t have enough dedicated resources to focus on this…

Second, Grab used to be fixated on investing along its 3 core verticals — mobility, fintech and food. This isn’t quite the case today, said the source. While they are still important, they have a slightly more “flexible” mandate compared to before.

It will be interesting to see how this shapes up as Grab’s financials continue to improve with time. Their stock continues to sit at less than half of what it IPO-ed at (see below) which is leading some analysts to believe that it is an ideal buy *shrugs*

We shall see…

Interesting reads 🤓

• Why Michael Burry Walked Away... (The Money Printer Substack)

• Singapore’s Temasek warns weak US dollar is hitting returns (Financial Times)

• Sheikh Mansour makes first-ever UAE-China direct digital currency payment (Gulf News)

• UAE central bank scraps minimum salary requirement for loans (Gulf News)

• Chinese Builders Find Middle East Boom Fraught With High Risks and Low Margins (Caixin Global)

• The UAE’s next attraction: gambling (Financial Times)

• Abu Dhabi real estate deals almost double to $26bn (AGBI)

• From Dubai to Toronto, inside the crypto-to-cash storefronts fueling money laundering’s new frontier (ICIJ)

• Airwallex crosses $1b in annualized revenue as fintech unicorn takes on U.S. competitors like Ramp and Stripe (Fortune)

• Danantara to merge state-owned asset managers to take over Pertamedika (DealStreetAsia)

• There’s more to SEAsia’s VC standstill than unrealised returns (DealStreetAsia)

• One prospectus, two markets: SGX-Nasdaq dual-listing highway to debut in 2026 (Business Times)

Time for a fun poll! 📊

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Special mention! Talent layoffs, startup culture and telling good career stories with Aki Taha🎙️💫

Aki Taha built his recruitment career at some of the world’s leading brands in Silicon Valley and Singapore — Uber, Netflix, Google, Dropbox, Greylock Partners. Today, he runs his own newsletter and consultancy called TalentStories where he discusses all things careers, leadership, AI, remote work, team-building, work trends and more.

You may check it out here.

Aki is a dear friend so I’m obviously very biased but I genuinely thought this was a great recording. Do listen when you get the chance :)