EQT seeks joint AI and data centre deals with Saudi and UAE sovereign investors

EQT, Europe’s biggest private markets investment firm, is in talks with sovereign investors in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to explore joint artificial intelligence and infrastructure investment opportunities in the Arab world’s top two economies, its global chair has said.

The company with $400 billion in assets, which has been raising funds from Gulf investors for decades, is keen to now deploy capital in the region, home to some of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, Jean Eric Salata, told The National.

“Here [in the UAE] I would say, and we've also been talking to Saudis as well, looking at opportunities there. Those are the two big areas that we're working on right now,” Mr Salata said of the continuing AI co-investment conversations with sovereign investors.

“We're most excited about, which I think aligns with the strategic goals of the UAE, is the whole infrastructure, particularly data infrastructure and data centres, where we have globally one of the largest footprints.”

The Stockholm private equity company plans to expand its AI infrastructure footprint in the Gulf through its portfolio firm EdgeConneX, which owns more than 106 data centres across 25 countries, he said.

AI opportunity

EQT, which currently manages more than $100 billion in digital and energy assets across markets, is the latest global investor looking to the rapidly developing AI and digital infrastructure sector in the region.

AI has become a central plank of economic diversification efforts of the oil-rich Gulf economies that have already announced mega AI infrastructure projects.

The UAE is leading the way with a planned five-gigawatt UAE-US AI campus in Abu Dhabi, which includes Stargate UAE – a massive 1GW computing cluster anchored by a $20 billion data centre investment.

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UAE Tech investors Khazna and G42 are working on these projects alongside global leaders such as OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco, and investors such as SoftBank.

Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy, has rolled out Project Transcendence, a $100 billion scheme to scale domestic AI and data infrastructure. The kingdom’s $1 trillion Public Investment Fund has also set up Humain to build out national cloud infrastructure in the country.

Qatar’s sovereign arm, the Qatar Investment Authority, has also launched Qai, a $20 billion AI infrastructure partnership, to build out domestic GPU and data centre footprints.

Since last year the three Gulf states have announced AI investment plans worth $120 billion, which exceeded 5 per cent of their gross domestic product, according to International Monetary Fund estimates. The sheer scale of investment required for AI development and data centres creates a huge opportunity for global investors such as EQT.

The $1.3 trillion Blackstone Group has already struck a $3 billion deal with Saudi Arabia’s Humain, while tech giant Microsoft has committed over $10 billion towards data centres and related infrastructure across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait through to 2030.

“There are many conversations that are ongoing right now with potential partners, both here [in the UAE] and elsewhere in the region,” Mr Salata said. “This is a sector that is capital constrained and is really, if you think about the AI build-out, the core, the key constraint in building the infrastructure is actually physical. It's the physical constraint around chips, energy, and data centres.”

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There is no shortage of demand for compute, hence a very strong investment case for building the power generation capacity and rolling out data infrastructure, he said.

“I think that's where a lot of investment opportunity is right now for providers of long-term capital that can invest on a 15-year investment horizon,” he said.

UAE SWF partnerships

EQT opened an office in Abu Dhabi’s ADGM in September, joining the roster of trillion-dollar investors and asset managers including BlackRock, State Street, Blackstone Group, PGIM, Nuveen and Capital Group.

A base in Abu Dhabi gives global investors opportunities to expand in the region and work closely with sovereign funds, large family offices and institutional partners.

EQT is already working closely with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and Mr Salata said the firm is keen to expand that relationship.

“They are one of our most important partners, and we're very excited to be working with them in, I would say, ever-increasing dimensions. We not only manage investments for Adia in our funds, but we also do a lot of co-investing together,” Mr Salata said.

Adia is one of EQT’s largest co-underwriters in some of the European firm’s largest deals to take companies private in Europe. In June, Adia, along with Abu Dhabi’s $385 billion sovereign investment arm Mubadala Development Company, joined EQT’s £9.5 billion acquisition bid for the UK’s Intertek Group.

Over the years, EQT has executed several co-investment deals with Mubadala, including the 2022 acquisition of Envirotainer, a biopharmaceutical industry solutions company.

In 2025, Mubadala took a $600 million stake in Nord Anglia Education, and has been “a significant partner of ours all over the world”, he said.

Deeping ties

Establishing its first Middle East office in Abu Dhabi, Mr Salata said, was necessary to deepen its ties to the region, where it has active relationships with “many of the other sovereign wealth funds”.

“The plan is to continue to develop those relationships regionally and use this office as a base to access them on a more regular basis,” he said.

Forty EQT portfolio companies already have a presence in the Gulf, and with a local footprint, it expects more investments from regional sovereign investors to flow into those companies.

“The logical place for us to start is with our existing portfolio companies,” Mr Salata said. “We really want to try and figure out how we can become more deeply involved in the investment ecosystem here,” he said.

Over time EQT plans to bring more of its portfolio companies to the Gulf, and Mr Salata believes that the number will grow two or three-fold over the five to 10-year horizon.

The sectors it seeks to invest in are “very much aligned with some of the longer-term trends in the region”, including infrastructure, education and health care, as well as technology and energy, where “the government policy is supportive”, he added.