The New Wealth of Nations

Today, policymakers are treating geo-economics as a national security issue, putting investments behind their geopolitical strategies through sovereign wealth funds, national champions, and public-private partnerships.

Call it the rise of instrumental capital: the use of state-directed funds to pursue the dual mandate of generating financial returns and projecting state power. This capital is patient, long-term, and aligned with the domestic and international agendas of particular leaders. How countries invest is, increasingly, how they compete. In this new paradigm, governments are more than regulators of markets; they are now among the most consequential asset owners and allocators of capital in the global economy.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Middle East. While the development of some countries in the region has been held back by the presence of extremist groups or a lack of resources, wealthy Arab Gulf monarchies are set on a clear path toward prosperity. These countries are stable, well-resourced, and able to pursue economic agendas that are largely siloed from the region’s conflicts. Their rise is one of the most important trends in geopolitics and global finance.

The modern advent of sovereign wealth funds is at the heart of this revolution. Kuwait established the world’s first sovereign wealth fund in 1953. The Kuwaiti model spread around the world, and Middle Eastern sovereigns have since driven global capital flows. According to Global SWF, in the first nine months of 2025, Middle Eastern sovereign investors accounted for as much as 40 percent of state-investor deal value globally, with deals totaling $56.3 billion. Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds have more than $5.6 trillion in assets under management, which would make these pools of capital collectively the third-largest economy in the world. By 2030, that number is projected to climb to $8.8 trillion.

As many as 170 sovereign wealth funds worldwide—from China to Norway and Singapore—hold more than $14 trillion in assets. The mandates for sovereign wealth are changing along with their scale. For much of their history, these funds charted passive investment strategies, largely following macroeconomic trends. Today, a growing number of these sovereign wealth funds have transformed into active capital allocators and the engines behind broad technological and geoeconomic mandates that represent some of the most ambitious and high-stakes bets in the world. The most aggressive shift is taking place among the Middle East’s Gulf monarchies, where it is often a small group of political leaders and their inner circles, not just investment managers, who decide where, when, and why investments are made.

The scale and scope of instrumental capital is creating new domains of competition and cooperation. It is redirecting state capacity toward economic diversification, technological advantage, and geopolitical leverage. If the model endures, it could reshape not only the Middle East but also the architecture of global finance and the practice of statecraft.

The firm was financed by private investors who were issued shares in one of the world’s first publicly traded companies. But the Dutch government also backed the Dutch East India Company, understanding that it needed revenue to finance its war of independence. At the heart of this operation was the company’s government-granted monopoly over trade in Asia, one of the fastest growing markets in the world.

This precedent resonates today, as governments worldwide employ state-directed funds and influence, often through state-owned enterprises or strategic investments in private companies, to achieve national economic and geopolitical objectives, particularly in critical sectors such as technology and infrastructure.

The Marshall Plan was a later example of instrumental capital at scale. Proposed during the administration of U.S. President Harry Truman in 1947, the Marshall Plan committed $13.3 billion—roughly $150 billion in today’s terms—to rebuild Western Europe’s shattered postwar economies. The money was foreign aid, but it also advanced U.S. interests. At a moment when the United States was the only industrial power whose industries hadn’t been devastated by war, a revived Europe would offer markets for U.S. exports, reinforce the dollar’s global preeminence, and reduce the appeal of communism in the early days of the Cold War.

The Marshall Plan used targeted capital to shape the postwar balance of power. Today’s great-power competition likewise hinges on which states can deploy capital at scale to anchor alliances, build industrial capacity, and set the rules of an emerging order.

Such logic became even more pronounced as the Cold War continued. This was an era of geographically limited economic integration but intense global competition. With the end of the Vietnam War, the United States grew wary of military entanglements across the Pacific. Alarmed at the prospect of abandonment and seeking to reinforce its fraying connection to Washington, Taiwan—then a predominantly agricultural economy—invested in technology.

The strategy was straightforward: As author Chris Miller wrote in his book Chip War, “The more semiconductor plants on the island, and the more economic ties with the United States, the safer Taiwan would be.”

As the Cold War moved into the era of detente and the United States phased out economic aid to Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, the island courted trade over aid. In 1968, Texas Instruments approved its first plant in Taiwan. Five years later, the Taiwanese government founded the Industrial Technology Research Institute, led by Morris Chang. With $100 million from the country’s National Development Fund, Chang then launched the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

The fusing of state capital and technological innovation, backing university researchers and private sector investors and entrepreneurs, built the foundation of the United States’ technological ecosystem in the Cold War era of great-power competition. Washington supported the development in the late 1960s of technologies such as ARPANET, the first advanced computer network, and the innovative ecosystem around Silicon Valley that, along with companies such as TSMC, would come to define today’s global technology landscape.

The world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, now wield the greatest capacity to shape global flows of goods and capital, whether through investments or economic tools such as export controls and tariffs. Both are, in markedly different but sometimes converging ways, using economic statecraft not only for growth but also to gain strategic leverage where military or diplomatic tools fall short or would be too costly.

In recent months, Washington has closed critical-minerals and semiconductor deals while expanding investment pacts with places from Japan to the Gulf. Beijing has intensified its industrial policy to secure leadership in strategic sectors and drive toward self-reliance. With its centrally planned, state-party governance model, it has fused subsidies, industrial policy, and state-owned champions to move from being the world’s factory to becoming the world’s rising technology competitor.

Whereas Beijing mobilizes state-led capital to dominate strategic sectors, Washington relies primarily on deep capital markets and entrepreneurial dynamism, reinforced by public investment. This has coincided with a decade-long debate about industrial policy, wherein the state increasingly funds large-scale public projects, de-risks private investment, and addresses market shortcomings in areas such as research and development, albeit not often at the same scale or top-down approach as Beijing.

This industrial drive takes different forms but continues across administrations. The Biden administration-era CHIPS and Science Act committed $39 billion to domestic semiconductor production, while the Inflation Reduction Act sought to catalyze more than $3 trillion into the clean energy sector. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, established in 2019 during the first Trump administration in part to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, reframed U.S. development finance to promote investment in strategic sectors—a form of state capital. And investment deals have been a prominent feature of President Donald Trump’s second term.

The competition is far from settled—it’s a defining feature of global affairs. While the gap between the U.S. and Chinese economies is widening as the U.S. gross domestic product pulls ahead, each country is doubling down on state investments, especially in capital-intensive industries such as artificial intelligence, where public and private markets, as well as governments, are channeling trillions of dollars.

The past few years have also seen the emergence of new players in this contest—countries whose investments sometimes rival those of the world’s two largest economies.

Facing a different macroeconomic environment, these new Gulf leaders changed the mandates for their national wealth. Now, Middle East capital deployments don’t just seek returns—they drive national development and economic diversification. They shape how Gulf nations hedge between great powers. And they increasingly drive the innovation economy, as trillions of dollars globally are channeled into fields such as artificial intelligence.

The Gulf is far from a monolith. The members of the Gulf Cooperation Council share traits, but their strategies reflect national identities and priorities. Many Gulf monarchs expect to rule for decades, and they will continue to shape their plans and watch them unfold. As a result, these leaders invest with long-term time horizons that make them distinct from other categories of capital allocators.

The clearest articulation of this dynamic is Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2016 in an effort to build a “vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation.” The crown prince—the grandson of modern Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz—is leading a program of national transformation for the Arab world’s only G-20 economy and the home of Islam’s two holiest sites.

The program’s success will be determined by its results at home. With more than 35 million citizens—nearly two-thirds of whom are under 30 years old—the kingdom faces a demographic reality that is very different from its smaller Gulf neighbors. Its domestic circumstances mean that Riyadh needs to create private sector jobs in new industries such as tourism, entertainment and sports, and life sciences. That means transforming a vast landscape and a traditional socioeconomic model dominated by merchant families and state subsidies into one that fosters entrepreneurship and attracts ever-higher levels of foreign expertise, tourism, and investment.

Social reforms are connected to such economic outcomes. A 2017 royal decree granted Saudi women the right to drive and travel without male guardians. More women are entering the workforce, but these moves aren’t merely about long-delayed rights. Greater inclusion fuels growth, reduces brain drain, and may boost public buy-in for economic reforms even as some more traditional elements of Saudi society object to aspects of modernization.

Foreign policy and technology have become tools of domestic prosperity. Saudi Arabia courts ties both with its security guarantor, the United States, and with China, its top trading partner. The kingdom is becoming a more important trade and logistics hub, connecting growing economies in Asia, particularly India, with Europe.

It is also investing hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence, including in new data centers and AI champions such as Humain. Riyadh’s push for more AI leadership is a bet that the general-purpose technology could boost every sector of its diversifying economy—and that it has unique advantages not only due to its access to capital but also through a flexible regulatory environment and an abundance of affordable energy.

Vision 2030 has achieved remarkable results in its first decade. Saudi Arabia’s modernization has made it unrecognizable to many who knew it before. Its Public Investment Fund surpassed $1 trillion in assets in 2025.

However, as Riyadh demonstrates that it is not merely an investor but also a builder, the program continues to face and adapt to new challenges. The country’s fiscal deficit is projected to come in at 3.3 percent of its GDP in 2026, and it could grow if global oil prices fail to rise, cutting government revenue. Saudi Arabia’s external balance is strained by capital-intensive domestic projects that require massive imports of machinery, technology, and expertise, all of which have sharply narrowed the kingdom’s trade surplus. As a result, Vision 2030’s giga-projects—such as Qiddiya, Diriyah, and the planned futuristic megacity of Neom—have been slowed down or scaled back significantly as global oil prices have remained low and the kingdom takes stock of its strategy and capacity. But this is more of a recalibration than a pivot, reflecting the kingdom’s desire to make room for a growing portfolio of long-term bets.

Such pressures only increase the drive toward economic diversification. A kingdom that is less dependent on oil revenue could act more independently in geopolitics, develop more forms of influence and leverage, and position itself as a regional hub to investors across industries. The crown prince’s visit to Washington in November—and Trump’s engagements in Riyadh with the United States’ top technology executives in May—underscored how economic reforms are anchoring the kingdom to U.S. security architectures.

But among Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates—a country with a fraction of Saudi Arabia’s population and land—has made the fastest progress toward economic diversification. Its forward-leaning approach to technology has been particularly distinctive. In 2017, Abu Dabi named the world’s first minister of AI. The next year, it launched the company G42, now its flagship AI national champion. In 2023, Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council released Falcon, one of the first major Arabic-language large language models, extending the UAE’s technological reach to the world’s more than 400 million Arabic speakers.

These early investments gave the Emirates a first-mover advantage. With around 70 percent of the country’s output being derived from nonoil and gas sectors, its leaders don’t want to lose the distinction as the region’s most diversified economy. For years, global businesses have moved their people and regional headquarters to the UAE, starting in Dubai in the early 2000s and now in Abu Dhabi, which has become a commercial capital in addition to being a political one. Today, Abu Dhabi is the world’s richest city in terms of sovereign wealth funds, earning it the moniker “Abu Dhabi Inc.”

An ecosystem of sophisticated sovereign wealth funds drives different aspects of the UAE economy and powers an increasingly broad array of ambitions. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), established in 1976, is one of the world’s largest and most influential, with a long-term investment horizon and leadership position in alternative asset classes. The state-owned Mubadala Development Company launched in 2002 with a focus on economic diversification. After a merger in 2017, the new Mubadala Investment Company pivoted to be “future-focused,” investing in more than 50 countries in sectors from aerospace to semiconductors. MGX is an AI-focused investment vehicle co-founded in 2024 by Mubadala and G42, which together also launched an integrated health care company, M42. ADQ, established in 2018, serves as Abu Dhabi’s vehicle for domestic economic transformation across industries. And in 2023, the UAE launched Lunate, an alternative investment platform, underscoring the country’s growing confidence in an increasingly divided financial world.

The scope of these funds is expanding, positioning the country as one of the world’s leading drivers of cross-border capital flows. And by showcasing its capabilities and reach across asset classes and themes, Abu Dhabi is increasingly positioning itself as an entry point for navigating the region and its evolving sovereign wealth landscape.

The UAE is also attempting to use AI to become a strategic node in global infrastructure to help it build constructive relationships with major powers, including the United States. At the same time, it is becoming a broker with influence in both Western and Asian technology ecosystems, even shaping global investment trends in the AI value chain. With such high dependence on instrumental capital for fundraising, private companies are increasingly finding that Abu Dhabi’s decision to invest—or not invest—shapes broader sovereign perceptions of whether they are overvalued or priced appropriately.

While they can be market-making, the UAE’s sovereign investments have also put the country in the geopolitical spotlight. Under pressure from U.S. officials from both major parties, Emirati leaders have worked to cut technological ties with China. In late 2023, G42 CEO Peng Xiao told the Financial Times, “In order for us to further our relationship—which we cherish—with our U.S. partners, we simply cannot do much more with [previous] Chinese partners.” Xiao added, “We cannot work with both sides. We can’t.”

While concerns remain, the United States’ rescission in May of the Biden-era AI diffusion rule, which would have limited high-end chip exports to Gulf states such as the UAE, came days before Trump’s visit to the region and opened the possibility for expanded chip exports.

Qatar’s rise has been more recent, but no less remarkable. For many, Doha entered the spotlight with the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. By then, a country roughly the size of Connecticut had built infrastructure to accommodate millions of tourists and global marquee events. It did this with the help of national champion companies built through sovereign investments made by entities such as the Qatar Investment Authority. Qatar National Bank has around 20 million customers across 28 countries, Al Jazeera claims a global audience of 430 million, and Qatar Energy brings in more than $43 billion in revenues annually. Qatar Airways employs more than 50,000 people and has one of the world’s largest cargo fleets. Nearly 53 million people traveled through Hamad International Airport last year, making it one of the busiest airports in the region.

So far, Doha’s limit isn’t finance—it’s geopolitics and demography. Saudi Arabia can employ millions of its people and is working to provide jobs to millions more. Qatar, with a little more than 300,000 nationals and a significant population of migrant labor, cannot. The UAE has long attracted global talent. Qatar hasn’t for as long or on the same scale. To close the demographic gap, Doha aims to double its number of national champions with a goal of attracting as many as 2.5 million skilled workers over the next decade in fields such as tourism, education, health care, hospitality, financial technology, and artificial intelligence. Education City, a cluster of international university campuses launched in 2003, is central to this strategy, training both Qataris and foreign students for work in local industries.

Geopolitics can complicate matters, however. Qatar borders Saudi Arabia and is across the Gulf from Iran. From 2017 to 2021, an Emirati and Saudi-led blockade followed accusations of support for Islamist groups. And this year, Iranian missiles flew over Doha before hitting a nearby U.S. air base in the country. Qatar has sought to balance that pressure by hedging on multiple sides of political divides, a strategy that some have called “tactical neutrality.”

Qatari diplomats have made powerful friends and courted controversy by engaging globally, particularly in mediating on multiple sides of conflicts. Doha has facilitated negotiations between Russia and Ukraine as well as between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s hosted the leaders of the Taliban and Hamas—often at Washington’s request—generating criticism but also enhancing its influence and leverage. Most recently, Qatari leadership played a prominent role in negotiations over the release of Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza as well as in the peace plan for the territory.

Qatar’s investments and mediating role have won it great-power backers. To strengthen its already close ties to the United States, Doha financed the construction of Al Udeid Air Base, now the largest U.S. military installation in the region. In 2022, the United States designated Doha as a major non-NATO ally. Three years later, soon after an Israeli strike on Hamas targets in its capital, Doha won a security commitment from the United States and announced plans to build a new Qatari Emiri Air Force  facility in Idaho. All the while, Qatar’s more than $500 billion sovereign wealth fund explores investment opportunities around the world, including in the United States, Europe, and China.

The model of instrumental capital, pioneered by states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, is spreading. In 2020, Oman crowned its first new sultan in five decades and launched its Vision 2040. Kuwait is now introducing economic and governance reforms driven by the region’s second-largest fund, the Kuwait Investment Authority. Bahrain’s planned $17 billion in investments in the United States builds on its Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement. And should the Abraham Accords expand, the next steps could include deeper economic integration and more investments, with Israel shifting the region’s geopolitical balance once again.

Instrumental capital is giving the Gulf monarchies—and geopolitical swing states globally—the ability to punch above their demographic or military weight, much like oil did in the 20th century. The difference now is that this trend is being accelerated by two significant tailwinds: the strategic interdependence between the United States and China, which are top trading partners and each other’s leading competitors, and the emergence of generative AI as an economy-driving technology that needs the abundant capital and energy resources so prevalent in the Gulf.

Today, this capacity is both reforming Gulf monarchies’ domestic circumstances and giving them influence across every sector and geography—from chips to U.S.-China competition—making capital deployments a geopolitical lever in new ways.

Not all sovereign wealth funds play by the same rules. The Carnegie Endowment has noted how the growth in sovereign wealth increases the risk that they also “act as conduits of corruption, money laundering, and other illicit activities.” Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the country’s National Wealth Fund as well as the Russian Direct Investment Fund, saying the latter was “widely considered a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin and is emblematic of Russia’s broader kleptocracy.”

But as states with capital look for investment opportunities in critical technologies and regions that span the globe and seek to attract foreign investment from new partners, Western policymakers have a chance to identify shared interests and align sovereign investment with democratic values such as transparency, accountability, and respect for individual human dignity, courting geopolitical swing states in new ways.

And owners of sovereign wealth can also take stock of their own partnerships. U.S. policy in the Middle East changes from administration to administration. Without knowing who will next be in the White House, these owners seek to increase their autonomy and achieve balance, understanding that the next three years could be crucial to prove that their relationships don’t just rely on past commitments but also on future indispensability.

The long-term success of state investment, as with investments led by the private sector, will be determined by market mechanisms and feedback. In China, the party-state enables large-scale coordination and industrial dominance in certain sectors, yet the fatal conceit of central planning may be revealing itself in the country’s flagging domestic real estate sector and soaring debt. The U.S. system of free enterprise powers its growth, and its world-leading research institutions and companies drive its innovation ecosystem. But mounting fiscal constraints and political divisions limit strategic focus.

The Gulf states are wagering that their strategies will transform their economies—but overinvestment in unprofitable sectors or unsuccessful economic and social reforms could halt their considerable progress. And as every major economy channels unprecedented levels of investment in the promise of artificial intelligence, some ventures will succeed and offer returns at scale, while others will fail. Where AI firms can’t deliver on promised growth or savings, or if bottlenecks emerge that prevent or stall the industry’s growth and AI’s diffusion, investors could see a correction with ongoing downside risks.

If past is prologue, then the rise of this new wealth of nations and its importance for the future of progress, growth, and competition will continue. Capital will not replace diplomacy or hard power in any political system. But every day, state investments move the global economy and shift the balance of power. At a time when how countries invest defines how they compete, instrumental capital may prove to be decisive.