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  • Saudi’s PIF founds Saudi-Iraqi investment company with $3 bln capital

    Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has founded a Saudi-Iraqi investment company with $3 billion capital, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing the company’s acting CEO. The Saudi-Iraqi Investment Company will invest in areas including infrastructure, mining, agriculture, real estate development and financial services, CEO Muteb Alshathri said during the Saudi-Iraqi Coordination Council held in the Kingdom.

  • How the G7 Oil Price Cap Has Helped Choke Revenue to Russia

    As the Group of 7 prepares to meet again in this week in Hiroshima, Japan, official and market data suggest the untried idea has helped achieve its twin initial goals since the price cap took effect in December. The cap appears to be forcing Russia to sell its oil for less than other major producers, when crude prices are down significantly from their levels immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  • Mubadala Capital’s Ajami Says Money Is ‘No Longer a Moat’ for Startups

    Amid a funding crunch and an economic slowdown, venture capitalists and founders have increasingly been turning to the Middle East. At the center of this growing interest: Mubadala Capital Ventures. In 2017, SoftBank launched its $100 billion Vision Fund with backing from Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund and Mubadala Investment Co., an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund. That same year Mubadala opened its first U.S. offices, looking to invest in Silicon Valley founders. The difference now is that founders and investors don’t need firms like Mubadala to come to them — they’re going overseas to give talks, party-crash and raise funds now that capital is scarce.  In an environment where venture spending by almost everyone else is down significantly, Mubadala is finding itself suddenly popular by simply maintaining its steady pace.

  • Mubadala Capital’s Ajami Says Money Is ‘No Longer a Moat’ for Startups

    Mubadala Capital Ventures, the venture arm of Mubadala Investment Company, has made five new investments in 2023 through April, compared with 14 for all of last year. This year’s bets include Precision Neuroscience, Chroma Medicine, and Epi Biologics. Overall, MCV has deployed $800 million into the U.S. market since its launch in October 2017 and $358 million into Europe since it start there in 2019. That's a small part of the robust $284 billion Mubadala Investment Co. has on its balance sheet.

  • Major AI conference to be held in Saudi capital Riyadh

    Experience Analytics, hosted by Deloitte, will take place at The Arena in Riyadh with talks starting at 10am and ending at 6pm. More than 450 guests are expected to attend including senior executives and experts in data, analytics, and AI. Topics that will be explored include generative AI and machine learning with a specific focus on regional issues.

  • Air strikes, artillery fire escalate as factions battle in Sudan capital

    Air strikes and artillery fire intensified sharply across Sudan's capital early on Tuesday, residents said, as the army sought to defend key bases from paramilitary rivals it has been fighting for more than a month. The air strikes, explosions and clashes could be heard in the south of Khartoum, and there was heavy shelling across the River Nile in parts of the adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman, witnesses said.

  • Most influential Arabs of 2023 in the construction landscape

    The Arab world has witnessed the emergence of numerous remarkable individuals who have made indelible impressions on the international stage. Whether in politics, business, arts, or sports, Arab personalities have played pivotal roles in society and garnered widespread acclaim for their remarkable accomplishments.

  • Killing of Syrian Captagon kingpin turns up the heat on drug smugglers of the Middle East

    Just days after Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, warned in an interview with CNN that his country is “not taking the threat of drug smuggling lightly” and is ready “to do what it takes to counter that threat,” Merhi Al-Ramthan, a reputed Syrian drug kingpin, was killed when airstrikes targeted his house in the village of Shuab in the Sweida governorate.

  • Middle Eastern Countries Continue to Target Higher Renewable Energy Capacity

    The total installed capacity of solar energy in Saudi Arabia was 440MW in 2022, compared to just 22MW in 2013, while Egypt’s total installed capacity of wind energy had risen to 1,643MW from 555MW, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) (figures © IRENA 2023, from Renewable Capacity Statistics 2023). However, the share of renewable energy in the energy mix in the Middle East remains lower than in other regions. While a lot of the renewable energy capacity is expected to come from solar energy due to very favourable irradiation resources, the region also benefits from good wind resources. For example, ACWA Power has plans to build a 1.1GW wind power plant in Egypt by 2026.

  • Saudi Arabia seizes 8 million Captagon pills as it courts Syria’s Assad to clamp down

    Saudi authorities announced a major drug bust on Wednesday seizing more than 8 million Captagon pills, at the time that the kingdom is courting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad to help in combatting drug smuggling. The latest bust came as Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia has offered Syria "proposed compensation that would come as aid for the loss of the trade in the event it stops." It added that Riyadh had offered Assad "$4 billion, based on an estimate of the value of the trade."