00:00Please welcome to the stage, Waleed Al Mugarab Al Muhayri,
00:04Deputy Group CEO of Mubadla Investment Company,
00:08for a conversation with Bloomberg's Malika Kapoor.
00:15Waleed, welcome back to Bloomberg House.
00:18Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:20Sure. Last year, Mubadla was one of the most active sovereign wealth funds in the world.
00:26Since we're talking so much about AI today, I wanted to ask you,
00:30what proportion of your investments went towards AI and other emerging tech?
00:35Malika, thanks once again for having me.
00:37You know, we're just reflecting back on the Bloomberg partnership.
00:40It's been years and years, and we're so thankful that you give us this forum
00:43to be able to talk about what we need to put out there.
00:47So 2025 was a great year for Mubadla. Knock on wood.
00:50So this is close to wood, I think. Maybe here.
00:53But I think, look, it was a great year for us,
00:57because first you have to understand the way that Mubadla deploys capital.
01:01Mubadla deploys capital through the kind of four or five main businesses that we have.
01:07So if you bear with me, let me just give a quick introduction for the folks that don't know.
01:11Number one, Mubadla is a direct investor.
01:14And so what that means is private equity comprises the largest part of that capability.
01:19And that's obviously an engine with its own set of dynamics.
01:21And in fact, we have one of the co-leads, one of our co-CEOs,
01:24sitting right over there at the table right in front of me.
01:27In addition to the direct private equity,
01:30we also have an infrastructure and real estate business, a private credit book.
01:34These are all direct businesses that we have spent years setting up,
01:39and so obviously are part of that kind of deployment engine that you were referring to.
01:44We also have an indirect business that complements what we do extremely well.
01:48Let's call it the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, EDIC.
01:51And that's a large business for us, and that's an allocation business,
01:54where we work with the best funds in the world,
01:58allocate capital in those areas that we think are going to outperform.
02:03And then third, and I think this might surprise some folks that don't know us particularly well,
02:06how we manage money on other folks' behalf.
02:10So we have GP-led businesses.
02:11So the first of which is Mubadra Capital,
02:13which is now a large alternative asset manager that manages money from 81,
02:19I think at last count, 81 different LPs from all around the world.
02:24And then we have MGX, which is an AI-focused third-party capital manager
02:30that has now since proved to be quite a large and substantial investor in that space.
02:36So we are also seeing a shift towards private capital, towards real assets,
02:42and geographically, you know, last year you also talked about
02:45Asia-Pacific and emerging markets being an area of importance.
02:48Where is Mubadra leaning in right now?
02:50So right now, our portfolio is allocated around 41% to 42% is in the United States.
02:59And it's in the United States because today, you know,
03:02notwithstanding increased fragmentation and a little bit of division around the world,
03:07I still think it's one of the best risk-reward that you see that's out there.
03:11But at the same time, you know, when I look towards Asia,
03:14I see a huge amount of potential.
03:17I'll give you an example.
03:18And I was talking about this a little bit earlier on with some other folks.
03:22I mean, look at Korea as an example.
03:24Just in the first two weeks of the new year,
03:27their market is already up double digits.
03:30Look at how they performed last year.
03:31I mean, unless I'm mistaken, it was the number one performing market in the world.
03:36So whether it's Japan, South Korea, India, China,
03:41Asia is incredibly important to us,
03:43and I see a huge amount of both opportunity and growth.
03:45So for us, you know, we're going to keep allocating, obviously,
03:49to the United States as our single largest destination.
03:52But at the same time, there's so much diversity and opportunity
03:55that, you know, you're going to see Asia and Asian allocations
03:59increasing quite quickly over time.
04:02And thematically, is AI going to continue to be important for you this year,
04:05where they started 26?
04:07No, no question.
04:08AI is changing the world.
04:10Tell you a story.
04:11So it's not just about deploying capital and all the names that you all know,
04:15and everybody can take a view about whether something is overvalued or not.
04:19But where you really realize the true potential of artificial intelligence
04:23is when you see it affecting you just from a day-to-day perspective.
04:28In Mubadra today, you know, the way that we make investment decisions
04:31is through our investment committee, which I sit on.
04:33And so over the last nine months, we have booted up.
04:38We have created an AI agent, so an AI investment committee member.
04:43And, you know, it started out, you know, I would say, at the level of an associate,
04:48so just kind of a relatively junior, you know,
04:50somebody who could do really good summaries.
04:52We'd feed in all our investment memos and then would come back
04:55and tell us whether the valuation spread, you know,
04:56the football field was right or not.
04:59But, you know, now it's progressed and it's matured.
05:02And so when we talk to it, because we don't have to type anymore,
05:06we can talk to it, and it comes back, it's now playing the counterfactual,
05:10which is really interesting.
05:12And so we tell it to argue against what the team is putting in front of us.
05:18And listen, you know, it just gets better and better over time.
05:21It's not incredible yet, but it does make you think.
05:24And so when I think about it, having that capability,
05:29is so transformational, the potential is so clear,
05:34that, you know, you want to be part of not only the innovation,
05:37but the increasing productivity that comes from deploying tools like that.
05:42So if everything goes right, I see, you know,
05:45a rising tide that will bring all ships up.
05:47We're also talking about resilience here at Bloomberg House this week,
05:51and you recently partnered with Bloomberg Media on a study examining
05:55how global investors are reacting to this climate of uncertainty we face these days.
06:01I mean, it feels like we're waking up to a new crisis every day.
06:04So from your perspective, what strategies help organizations not just survive a crisis,
06:11but actually come out of it stronger?
06:14It's a great question.
06:16And, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about resilience,
06:19not only here in Davos, but I think in other places.
06:22Look, let's unpack resilience a little bit,
06:24because it means different things to different people.
06:28I think the way that you put the question makes it almost defensive, okay?
06:32In the sense that, yes, you want to cushion your portfolio, right?
06:37And so you want to, through diversification, through, I think, risk management,
06:42you want to have that defensive posture.
06:45And that's a really important element of resilience.
06:48But I don't think it's the full story.
06:50So for me, you've got to have kind of an offensive element, right?
06:56In addition to that kind of defensive part of it.
06:57So how do you do that, yeah?
06:58So first, you know, because we're a long-term investor,
07:02we came to realize that having that long-term perspective
07:06is in and of itself a form of resilience, okay?
07:11You're not forced to sell something at the wrong time.
07:13Right.
07:13So that's number one, okay?
07:14So that's really important.
07:16Second, obviously, liquidity plays an incredible role.
07:18So you want to make sure that, you know, there's no pullback.
07:22So when markets, as they always do, go into that trough,
07:27go into that down cycle, you want to make sure that you have the liquidity
07:30and the dry powder to be able to seize the opportunity.
07:33And so that is also a form of resilience.
07:36That is the offensive form of resilience,
07:39at least in the way that we put it together.
07:42So for me, it's about putting the defensive elements
07:44that we all are familiar with and that come to mind,
07:47but thinking through how we can put together
07:49some of those offensive things that we can do
07:51to make resilience kind of an important element
07:54for not only how you structure a portfolio,
07:57how you manage risk, how you think about themes going forward,
08:00and just define what's important to you.
08:02Well, we wish you good luck at the start of 2026
08:04and hope you'll come back to Bloomberg House next year.
08:07Thank you so much.
08:08Good to see you.
08:08All right.
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