00:00Sources telling Bloomberg that Abu Dhabi's MGX raised nearly 50 billion dollars to accelerate
00:05spending on AI infrastructure and tech. The fund is ranked as one of the biggest AI investment
00:10vehicles ever. Bloomberg's Jenny Serain joins us now. Jenny, great reporting from the team.
00:16What exactly is the plan with this giant haul they've now brought in?
00:20Yeah, so this is one of the main vehicles that Abu Dhabi is using to go out and invest in
00:25AI.
00:25And so this is an emirate-wide push to kind of be the main investors in this technology.
00:32So they've got a plan. That plan will see them invest some 10 billion a year over the next decade
00:37as they try to get to that 100 billion dollar goal that they have. I think the really interesting
00:42thing here is we've always sort of viewed the Middle East as a source of capital. They have
00:47these massive sovereign wealth funds that kind of go out and invest the very PE firms that Scarlett
00:52was just talking about. You know, in this you see them actually kind of flipping that narrative
00:56and they're going out to the different institutional investors that they've long backed and they're
01:00actually saying, no, bring it back. We've got the institutional know-how. We've been the bigger
01:04players in this space for a while. Back us and let us show you what we can do when we're
01:08at the
01:09driving wheel. Isn't that a big problem, Ben, for private capital who have so relied on these
01:15Middle Eastern investors now that they're saying, we're going to stay and we're going to keep this
01:19money at home and invest it that way? I think it will be one of the more interesting dynamics
01:24on Wall Street to keep track of in the next few years. I think, you know, it's gone from being
01:28a source of capital in a place that bankers fly in and out, you know, every couple of months and
01:32come back with big checks. And now it's going to be a much more strategic conversation between these
01:37two parties. You know, these governments are becoming more sophisticated. They're involved in
01:41almost every deal. They have deal makers, you know, at their beck and call. And so they're able to
01:46kind of put this money to work in a much different way. And they're able to kind of
01:50cajole these different institutional forms of capital to come along with them.
01:54By the way, does it just feel like all the capital, all these funds being raised are just
01:58AI related? I remember John Gray was speaking, I think it was at a Bernstein conference, maybe it
02:02was in Morgan Stanley, one of the big financial ones, basically saying, if you like AI and you want
02:06to invest in AI stocks, invest in Blackstone because we're becoming AI. How many of these big
02:11global funds have just sort of remade their image to go all in on AI infrastructure?
02:16I think that's the main theme we're seeing from basically every big institutional source
02:20of capital these days. It's, I think it's interesting because you don't just see it
02:24anymore as like a tech investment or an equity investment. This is in their infrastructure funds.
02:28This is in their debt funds. So basically every senior person at the operating committee level,
02:33this is all they're thinking about. And these are the opportunities they're most excited about.
02:36And so in that way, it's not such a surprise that you might see them start to kind of
02:40flip that script and yeah, actually invest in one of the main, you know, deal makers that
02:46has been in this space for a while now.
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