An ambitious plan this fall by Apollo Global Management and an arm of Abu Dhabi\u2019s state-owned oil company to invest billions of dollars in artificial intelligence died in the boardroom of Apollo\u2019s biggest Wall Street rival.<\/p>\n
For months, Apollo and Abu Dhabi\u2019s XRG had been drawing up plans for a new fund to invest in AI infrastructure, people familiar with the matter said. Each side would initially invest about $2 billion in the fund, which would join other partnerships between Wall Street and Gulf players chasing riches and clout in the AI boom.<\/p>\n
XRG\u2019s board met to discuss the project in September at the New York offices of Blackstone, whose president, Jon Gray, is an XRG board member and sometimes hosts rotating board meetings. Gray voiced concerns \u2014 ultimately echoed by other directors \u2014 that XRG wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
The episode left some Apollo executives believing a rival had torpedoed the deal out of jealousy. And it left XRG, which was founded a year ago this week, still refining its playbook. XRG, Blackstone, and Apollo declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The failed plan offered a glimpse of how intense rivalries in the Gulf and on Wall Street are shaping a moment when investors see huge returns from helping countries in that region turbocharge their economic transitions from oil to tech. While bankers have learned to balance the interests of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar \u2014 each keen to be a regional hub for high finance \u2014 Gulf leaders are learning that their partners also have their own politics.<\/p>\n
Abu Dhabi this week is hosting financiers from around the world for its annual investment conference, the centerpiece of its campaign to be the \u201ccapital of capital\u201d and a destination for Western investment.<\/p>\n
So far, there has been enough appetite and money on both sides to go around without much infighting. Blue Owl has partnerships with Qatar\u2019s sovereign wealth fund to back digital infrastructure, and with Abu Dhabi\u2019s Lunate to buy stakes in other investment managers. BlackRock has tie-ups with both Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi\u2019s MGX. And across the Gulf, new pockets of money and ambitions are popping up all the time: Abu Dhabi\u2019s newest state investor, L\u2019imad \u2014 at least its sixth fund \u2014 popped up in October and is now among the Gulf funds backing Paramount\u2019s hostile bid<\/a> for Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n But the region\u2019s let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom era will likely wane; Saudi Arabia, in particular, has begun to turn its investment portfolio inward, toward domestic projects. Soon, parties on both sides will face increased competition for money and attention, sharpening rivalries between Wall Street firms that are already competing fiercely on other fronts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ambitious plan this fall by Apollo Global Management and an arm of Abu Dhabi\u2019s state-owned oil company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-179161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}