2026 letter to partners
Dear Partners,
I wish you and your family a happy and prosperous 2026.
Thank you for supporting us in making 2025 another defining year for Mubadala. You have helped create one of the world’s fastest growing and deepest networks of talent, capital, and innovation.
It is a success story that creates value for us, for you, and for our entire stakeholder group, and is a responsibility we take very seriously. We carry significant momentum into 2026, and I want to share my views on what comes next.
Resilience in a Changing World
The organizing principles of the new global economy are becoming clearer. Capital and talent are shifting toward environments that offer energy reliability, resilience, security, and the digital and physical foundations required for an increasingly compute-intensive world.
Fragmentation remains a reality, making pragmatic cooperation more critical than ever. In this environment, nations and institutions that can operate across different systems, standards, and alliances hold a structural advantage.
We’re seeing demographic shifts, infrastructure development, and rapid digital adoption transform both economic drivers and demand, especially across the Global South. These changes are broadening opportunities across more regions.
National competitiveness increasingly depends on integrating energy, digital infrastructure, capital, and talent into a cohesive framework capable of scaling next-generation technologies. Artificial intelligence is at the core of this shift and is quickly becoming a catalyst for productivity, but it is also widening the divide between countries and institutions. Nations must take a comprehensive government-wide approach to understanding how their economic base will evolve, which new roles will develop, and which will be displaced.
The ability to scale AI responsibly is becoming as foundational as access to natural resources and physical trade routes were in previous industrial eras. With global datacenter and compute-related energy demand expected to more than double by 2030, energy access will become a gating factor for the intelligence economy and national competitiveness.
These shifts are reshaping the global investment landscape. Stable, long-term capital has become a differentiator, and this is the context in which we enter 2026 and the basis for how we invest, build platforms, and partner with you.
UAE Trajectory
Over the past generation, guided by a clear vision and consistent leadership, the UAE has built the social and economic foundations of a resilient, opportunity-rich, and increasingly AI-native economy. In the UAE’s diversified economy today, non-oil GDP accounts for more than three-quarters of national output, and the country has risen from 28th to 5th in global competitiveness since 2009.
Our energy strategy underpins our economic roadmap, with our hydrocarbon and nuclear capacity alongside clean-power developments such as Masdar’s 24/7, one-gigawatt, always-on battery storage project, providing the reliable, diverse energy mix required for intelligence-intensive growth.
The UAE recognized early that artificial intelligence would become a defining driver of global competitiveness. That commitment began with the appointment of the world’s first Minister of AI in 2017, followed by a policy framework that led to Abu Dhabi’s establishment of the Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology Council, the Advanced Technology Research Council, and other entities.
This framework also led to the creation of Mohammed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence and to commercial AI champions such as G42, MGX, M42, and Space42. Today, over 1,100 Abu Dhabi public services are delivered through a single AI-enabled platform; every government entity has a Chief Data and AI Officer; and advances in genomics and precision health through M42 are transforming population-wide care.
Stargate UAE, which President Trump inaugurated alongside global technology leaders during a state visit to the Emirate in May 2025, is a defining part of this trajectory. The large-scale campus in Abu Dhabi, nine times the size of Monaco, is the largest AI factory outside the United States and is designed to deliver frontier compute at scale. Its construction is well underway, and the initial 200 MW cluster will begin operations in late 2026.
The approval of up to 35,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GB300 chips for Stargate UAE underscores the trust behind this partnership. In a region where fewer than 10,000 advanced chips have been deployed to date, it marks a step change in sovereign AI capability.
As a result of global collaboration this year, the UAE will begin exporting intelligence, ultimately delivering trillions of tokens in partnership with global technology leaders across a region that represents a significant share of the world’s population.
Openness remains a structural advantage because it is engineered into the UAE’s economic architecture. Through 32 Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements that cover nearly a quarter of the global population, the UAE reduces friction across markets and provides global businesses with a platform for growth across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Coupled with the largest federal budget in our history and a National Investment Strategy targeting USD 65 billion in annual inbound investment, the UAE continues to attract and amplify the world’s best talent and most sophisticated capital.
Taken together, these elements reflect a nation building the architecture of the future economy and an environment that enables Mubadala and our partners to grow, innovate, and create lasting value.
An Investor for the New Global Economy
Mubadala’s role is to translate long-term national strategy into investable platforms that can scale globally, which is a mandate that has shaped our investment decisions for more than two decades.
When the Government of Abu Dhabi gave Mubadala the mandate two decades ago to invest in renewable energy, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare and life sciences, many thought we were perhaps a bit too ahead of our time. Those decisions were based on a clear view of the future and what would be foundational for the UAE.
We are now focused on scaling those and other sectors that will determine competitiveness in the decades ahead, and we are structured to be opportunistic and nimble without sacrificing the long-term perspective required to deliver on our mandate.
In this environment, many of our critical gains come from our conviction to make early moves and embrace complex situations. Our benchmark-leading performance over one, five, and ten years reflects a consistent approach: focus on fundamentals, build capability, and partner for long-term value.
These traits are evident in our accelerating investment across private credit, clean energy, compute, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and digital infrastructure. Our endowment model through the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and our Real Assets portfolio further strengthen our ability to think beyond traditional cycles.
Mubadala Capital is a powerful example of the platforms we build. It now manages, advises, and administers more than USD 430 billion, with leading international institutions placing trust in its Brazil franchise, venture, and solutions platforms, as well as its extensive co-investment program.
In the United States, our largest market, we continue to deepen exposure to technologies that drive global productivity, while reinforcing two-way flows of investment and innovation. China anchors our Asia strategy in advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and consumer industries, and we have built a broad in-market platform for long-term growth.
Across India, Japan, and South Korea, digitization and industrial reinvention create opportunities for us to act as a bridge between Asia’s growth engines and global partners. In Europe, we continue to expand partnerships in energy, industrial technologies, and life sciences, linking major innovation hubs to Abu Dhabi’s long-term strategy. And, in the UAE, we will continue to support the Emirate’s manufacturing base and innovation in critical metals, composite manufacturing, renewables, financial services, and essential infrastructure.
Building Together
We begin 2026 as a more global, more diversified, and more technology-enabled investor, with momentum building for another transformative year.
As the UAE formally marks 2026 as ‘The Year of Family,’ it is a reminder of global capital's responsibility to expand human opportunity, which is an imperative that defines Mubadala and the impact we deliver with our partners.
In that spirit, I look forward to what we will achieve together.
Yours sincerely,
Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak
Managing Director and Group CEO
