MGX talks to join OpenAI's $30B round, putting Abu Dhabi on both sides of the AI race

DUBAI — OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, with UAE investors including Abu Dhabi's MGX named among those negotiating, alongside lead investor Coatue and SoftBank.

The round has not closed. Signatures are being targeted for the end of next week, and the raise is positioned as a pre-IPO bridge. OpenAI is separately negotiating a commercial agreement for more compute capacity in the UAE.

The Gulf angle is the story. MGX co-led OpenAI's $122 billion round in March, and it also co-led Anthropic's $30 billion Series G in February and its $65 billion Series H in May at a valuation near $965 billion. If the OpenAI allocation lands, the Abu Dhabi vehicle would hold meaningful positions in both frontrunners of the AI IPO race, a two-horse book no other sovereign-linked investor can match at that scale.

The compute negotiation running in parallel points the other direction: capital flows west from the Gulf, while datacenter capacity and model access flow back. That loop has defined the UAE's AI strategy across the past two years of MGX dealmaking.

Watch whether the round signs on schedule and how large the Gulf allocation is. The size of MGX's cheque against its Anthropic exposure will show which side of the race Abu Dhabi expects to win.

CNBC first reported the talks.