How Sovereign Wealth Funds Are Quietly Buying Up Critical Tech

One of the most important investment offices that most people are unaware of is located in an unremarkable building outside of Abu Dhabi. Mubadala owns it, and decisions that subtly determine who controls the next generation of computing power are made in rooms like this one. There’s no press conference about it. In a way, that’s the point.

In the past, sovereign wealth funds were uninteresting, at least to outsiders. The occasional skyscraper, oil money invested in stable bonds, or perhaps a share in a European utility. That is no longer the case. It’s difficult to overstate how quickly funds like Mubadala, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Singapore’s GIC and Temasek, and Kuwait’s investment authority have been investing in the advanced computing, data centers, and chip manufacturing infrastructure that underpins artificial intelligence over the last three years. Sovereign-owned investors invested about $66 billion in AI and digitization projects in 2025 alone. It is anticipated that number will continue to rise.

It’s worthwhile to consider why. Together, these funds oversee more than $12 trillion, and unlike hedge funds, they don’t pursue quarterly returns. The majority of them are not required to pay out on a regular basis. They can sit on an asset for fifteen years if they so choose, waiting for a data center campus or a chip fabrication plant to develop into something truly valuable. This patience is exactly what makes them dangerous competitors in private markets. That is simply unmatched by traditional private equity firms, which are constrained by fund cycles and exit timelines.

The agreements themselves read like an AI buildout who’s-who list. Supported by Temasek, Kuwait’s sovereign fund, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, the AI Infrastructure Partnership recently acquired a majority stake in Aligned Data Centers at a valuation of about $40 billion. Earlier this year, a funding round for Anthropic was led by Singapore’s GIC. The PIF of Saudi Arabia has joined a group considering a $55 billion takeover of Electronic Arts, which isn’t precisely AI infrastructure but shows the same desire for control and scale. When you start looking for it, the pattern is obvious.

The surprising thing is how little opposition any of this has encountered. Ten years ago, purchases of Western tech assets by foreign governments would have prompted national security assessments and congressional hearings. Although there is still some scrutiny, it appears that much of the tension has been reduced due to the sheer amount of capital that sovereign funds can use and the urgent need for patient money in the private markets. These funds are no longer being opposed by private equity firms. They are collaborating with them more and more. In 2025, nine of the top ten sovereign-wealth transactions were co-investments rather than solo ventures with private equity sponsors.

If you’re just looking at the dollar figures, it’s easy to overlook the national-strategy component of this. Through initiatives like Humain, PIF is attempting to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from its reliance on oil while also building domestic AI champions. According to Mubadala’s leadership, energy and AI infrastructure are now considered to be the same issue since they both call for large, dependable power grids and are changing how a nation views long-term economic security. Investing is no longer the only option. It’s balance sheet-based industrial policy.

It is genuinely unclear if this consolidation of vital infrastructure under sovereign ownership will serve as a source of new geopolitical leverage or as a stabilizing force. It’s difficult not to wonder who really controls the on-switch for tomorrow’s AI systems given the speed at which these acquisitions are occurring, and whether or not that question is being taken seriously enough in the rooms where it matters.