A car passes in front of ADNOC Gas, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company facility, in Abu Dhabi on March 3, 2026.
Ryan Lim | AFP | Getty Images
Investments that solve problems and serve national interests are among the most attractive in the current environment, according to decades-long veterans of global private markets.
Hazem Ben Qasem, founder and CEO of Abu Dhabi-based investment firm Blue Five Capital, said smart money in the Middle East is focused on governments and strategic priorities, and on finding solutions in those areas. Because “that’s what sovereign bodies are looking for and that’s what the money is available for.”
“My proposal is not to use the fund, but to choose a solution and how can we play a very important role in that solution given our national priorities like food security, defense and infrastructure,” Ben Qasem told CNBC at the SuperReturn Asia conference in Singapore. He added that automation and robotics are also important areas.
Blue Five, which was launched in November 2024 and has $15 billion in assets under management as of June 30, signed a deal earlier this month to acquire a 30% stake in supercar production company Bugatti Rimac from Porsche. In July, he co-led a funding round for China-based AI video generation company Kling AI, valuing Kling AI at $18 billion.
Ben Qasem also said that geopolitics is becoming an increasingly important factor for investors to consider as they look for areas to put their money.
“Today, it’s increasingly likely that geopolitics is probably a bigger variable in revenue, especially in the regions of the world that we cover: the Middle East, Europe, Asia and China,” he said. “Geopolitics can disrupt any assumptions you make in your use case.”
