Based on Wikipedia: Mubadala Investment Company

When most people think of sovereign wealth funds, they imagine quiet money managers methodically buying government bonds and blue-chip stocks. Mubadala breaks that mold. This Abu Dhabi investment giant has its fingers in everything from computer chips to self-driving cars, from Brazilian subway systems to German insurance startups. And lately, it's been at the center of geopolitical drama involving Turkish grocery delivery wars and American national security concerns.

The numbers are staggering. With hundreds of billions of dollars under management, Mubadala ranks among the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. But what makes it fascinating isn't just its size—it's how aggressively it hunts for the technologies and businesses that will shape the next century.

Born from Oil, Built for What Comes After

To understand Mubadala, you have to understand Abu Dhabi's fundamental anxiety: oil won't last forever.

The emirate sits on roughly six percent of the world's proven oil reserves. That's an extraordinary fortune, but it's a depleting one. Every barrel pumped today is one fewer barrel available tomorrow. The rulers of Abu Dhabi have spent decades wrestling with a question that would keep any reasonable person up at night: how do you transform finite underground wealth into permanent above-ground prosperity?

Their answer was sovereign wealth funds. Lots of them.

The International Petroleum Investment Company, known as IPIC, came first in 1984. Its mission was straightforward: take oil profits and invest them in energy-related businesses around the world. Then came Mubadala Development Company in 2002, with a broader mandate to diversify Abu Dhabi's economy into technology, aerospace, healthcare, and real estate.

For years these two funds operated in parallel, occasionally overlapping, sometimes competing. In 2016, the government decided this was inefficient. Why have two giant investment vehicles when you could have one even more giant one?

The merger created the Mubadala Investment Company in 2017. The combined entity became a juggernaut, wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi government and chaired by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan—the same Sheikh Mansour who owns Manchester City Football Club and serves as Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.

The Semiconductor Obsession

If there's one sector where Mubadala has bet most heavily, it's computer chips.

This might seem odd for an oil-rich emirate. What does Abu Dhabi know about semiconductor manufacturing? The answer is: more than you'd think, and they've paid dearly to learn.

The story begins in 2008, when Mubadala created the Advanced Technology Investment Company, or ATIC. Almost immediately, ATIC went shopping. It acquired a controlling stake in AMD's manufacturing operations, spinning them off into a new company called GlobalFoundries. Then it bought Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, a major chip fabrication company based in Singapore. The two were merged, creating one of the world's largest independent chip foundries.

GlobalFoundries matters because of something called "foundry" manufacturing. Most technology companies that design chips—Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD—don't actually make them. They design the blueprints, then pay specialized foundries to handle the incredibly complex manufacturing process. Taiwan's TSMC dominates this market, which is why geopolitical tensions around Taiwan cause such anxiety in tech circles.

Through GlobalFoundries, Mubadala positioned Abu Dhabi as a player in this critical industry. The company operates massive fabrication plants, called fabs, in Dresden, Germany; Malta, New York; and Singapore. In 2011, ATIC announced investments of five and a half billion dollars to expand these facilities. They even announced plans for a six to eight billion dollar chip factory in Abu Dhabi itself, though the economics of semiconductor manufacturing have made that kind of local production challenging.

Mubadala's semiconductor journey hasn't been all smooth sailing. In 2007, they invested heavily in AMD directly. By 2017, they still held nearly thirteen percent of the chipmaker. Then in 2019, they sold everything. The timing was notable—AMD's stock subsequently soared as its processors started beating Intel's in key benchmarks. Sometimes even sovereign wealth funds get their timing wrong.

The Global Portfolio

Beyond semiconductors, Mubadala's investments read like a tour of the global economy's most interesting corners.

In telecommunications, they invested in Reliance Jio Platforms, the Indian telecom giant that has brought cheap mobile internet to hundreds of millions of people. In artificial intelligence, they took a stake in G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI company, and transferred two of their IT subsidiaries—Injazat and Khazna—to it.

In messaging, they invested in Telegram, the encrypted communication app that has become a go-to platform for privacy-conscious users, political dissidents, and, somewhat uncomfortably, occasionally less savory characters as well.

In autonomous vehicles, they backed Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company. In logistics, they invested in Turvo, a supply chain software startup. In life sciences, they took a position in Envision, a UK healthcare company.

They own 7.5 percent of the Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest private equity firms. They became the largest external shareholder in Investcorp, a Bahraini investment firm, by acquiring a twenty percent stake in 2016.

In Brazil, they bought MetrôRio, the company that operates Rio de Janeiro's subway system. In Russia—before the complications that came later—they purchased a 2.6 percent stake in En+ Group, a producer of aluminum marketed as "green" due to its reliance on hydroelectric power. That stake came from Polina Yumasheva, the former wife of oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

The common thread? Mubadala seems drawn to businesses that sit at the intersection of technology, infrastructure, and future growth. They're not just buying yield; they're buying exposure to the industries they believe will matter most in coming decades.

The Fortress Deal and American Anxiety

In May 2023, Mubadala announced it would acquire a seventy percent stake in Fortress Investment Group from SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate, for about three billion dollars. Fortress manages a diverse portfolio including credit, real estate, and private equity investments.

Seemed straightforward enough. One giant investment firm buying another.

Then the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS (pronounced "siff-ee-us"), got involved.

CFIUS is a government body that reviews foreign acquisitions of American companies for national security implications. It's become increasingly active and aggressive in recent years, particularly regarding investments from countries with close ties to China. And there's the rub: the UAE maintains significant economic relationships with Beijing, even as it strengthens ties with Washington.

The Fortress deal underwent extended scrutiny. Would giving an Abu Dhabi-controlled fund access to Fortress's data, relationships, and investment positions create security risks? The review dragged on well past the original closing timeline.

Finally, in May 2024, CFIUS approved the sale. A year later, in April 2025, Mubadala and Fortress announced a new billion-dollar investment partnership, suggesting the relationship was working well.

But the extended review sent a signal: even for a close American ally like the UAE, major acquisitions would face heightened scrutiny in an era of great power competition.

The Getir Saga

Not all of Mubadala's investments go smoothly. The Turkish grocery delivery company Getir provides a cautionary tale about what happens when sovereign wealth meets startup drama.

Getir was a pandemic-era darling. The company promised to deliver groceries to your door in minutes, not hours. At its peak, it was valued at nearly twelve billion dollars. Then reality set in. The economics of ultrafast delivery proved brutally difficult. Losses mounted. Investors grew nervous.

Mubadala, as a major investor, proposed a restructuring in 2024. The plan would split Getir's profitable local delivery operations from its struggling international expansion. Mubadala would acquire the profitable Turkish business in exchange for a two hundred fifty million dollar investment.

Getir's founders, Nazim Salur and Serkan Borancili, were not pleased.

In January 2025, Salur accused Mubadala of an "illegal coup." He alleged the fund tried to seize all the founders' shares and "intentionally delayed" transferring equity units owed to them. The founders claimed Mubadala tried to back out of the deal entirely at the end of 2024.

Legal action followed. The founders appealed to the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and threatened suits in Turkey and the UK as well.

In late January 2025, Salur fired Getir's CEO, Batuhan Gultakan, reportedly because Gultakan had fully supported Mubadala's restructuring plan. Mubadala prepared an alternative proposal, claiming it had already been approved by Getir's independent directors.

The situation remained unresolved, a reminder that even the world's most sophisticated investors can find themselves mired in messy corporate disputes.

The Pegasus Problem

One Mubadala investment has attracted particularly uncomfortable attention.

Mubadala Capital, a unit of the company, invested fifty million euros in Novalpina Capital, a private equity fund. In 2019, Novalpina used its one billion euro fund to acquire the NSO Group.

NSO Group is the Israeli company that makes Pegasus, perhaps the most sophisticated commercial spyware ever created. Pegasus can infiltrate smartphones with zero clicks from the target—no need to trick someone into clicking a malicious link. Once installed, it can access everything: messages, emails, calls, camera, microphone, location.

Governments around the world have used Pegasus to surveil journalists, dissidents, human rights activists, and political opponents. The UAE itself has been identified as one of the spyware's most prolific users. Reports revealed that UAE authorities targeted human rights activists, journalists, and even Princess Haya, a member of Dubai's ruling family who fled to London amid a custody dispute with her husband, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Mubadala Capital's investment gave it a seat on Novalpina's committee of largest investors. Whether that translated into any oversight of NSO's activities remains unclear. But the connection highlights how sovereign wealth investments can intersect with geopolitics and human rights in uncomfortable ways.

Structure and Strategy

Mubadala organizes its investments through four main platforms, each with its own focus.

The Direct Investments platform handles major stakes in established companies—the GlobalFoundries and Carlyle Group positions of the world. The UAE Investments platform focuses on building businesses and infrastructure within the Emirates themselves. The Disruptive Investments platform targets emerging technologies and startups, the Waymos and wefoxes. The Real Estate and Infrastructure Investments platform does exactly what it sounds like.

Beyond these four pillars, Mubadala has specialized vehicles. Mubadala Technology, the successor to ATIC, continues to focus on advanced technology investments. Mubadala Energy, formerly Mubadala Petroleum, manages the fund's upstream oil and gas investments while increasingly exploring liquefied natural gas, blue hydrogen, and carbon capture—a hedge against the day when traditional fossil fuels fall out of favor.

The company supports research at universities across the UAE, including Khalifa University, UAE University, American University of Sharjah, and New York University Abu Dhabi. These investments in human capital may matter as much as the financial ones in the long run.

The Bigger Picture

Mubadala represents something broader than just Abu Dhabi's investment strategy. It's part of a global phenomenon: the rise of state capitalism.

Sovereign wealth funds now control trillions of dollars. Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, fed by North Sea oil profits, is the world's largest single owner of stocks. Singapore's GIC and Temasek are major forces in global markets. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is spending lavishly on everything from golf tournaments to artificial intelligence.

These funds blur the line between government and market. When Mubadala buys a stake in a company, is it making a commercial decision or a strategic one? Often both. The fund needs returns to fulfill its mandate of securing Abu Dhabi's future. But it can also accept lower returns in exchange for strategic benefits—access to technology, influence over key industries, relationships with important players.

This creates tensions with countries like the United States, which worry about foreign government influence over sensitive sectors. The CFIUS review of the Fortress deal won't be the last time Mubadala faces such scrutiny.

For Abu Dhabi, the calculus remains clear. Oil made the emirate rich. But only disciplined investment of that wealth can keep it rich once the wells run dry. Every stake Mubadala takes, every company it acquires, every relationship it builds is part of a multigenerational project: turning black gold into permanent prosperity.

Whether they succeed will depend on factors far beyond their control—technological change, geopolitical shifts, the unpredictable evolution of global capitalism. But they're betting big, and they're betting smart. And in a world of sovereign wealth funds, that makes Mubadala one to watch.