- Sheikh Tahnoon secretly bought 49% of World Liberty Financial for $500 million in January 2025, just days before the inauguration.
- The deal gave G42 executives board seats and preceded a major policy shift allowing the UAE to purchase 500,000 restricted US AI chips annually.
- World Liberty recently launched a lending platform for its USD1 stablecoin, which has already surpassed $3 billion in circulating supply.
A secret US$500 million (AU$765 million) deal has placed an investment vehicle backed by Emirati Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the center of World Liberty Financial’s ownership,
According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi entity linked to Tahnoon, quietly acquired a 49% stake in WLFI just four days before Donald Trump’s January 2025 inauguration. This raised questions about the project’s political and regulatory exposure in the United States.
Moreover, Eric Trump signed the agreement on behalf of the project. The deal was never publicly disclosed.
It also turns out executives from G42, a major Abu Dhabi technology group, helped manage Aryam and took seats on World Liberty’s board, making Tahnoon’s vehicle the company’s largest outside shareholder.
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AI Ambitions and US Policy Backdrop
Tahnoon, the UAE’s national security adviser and brother to President Mohammed bin Zayed, has played a central role in the country’s push to build out artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
Under the Biden administration, US officials restricted access to advanced American AI chips over fears that sensitive technology could be diverted to China, including through firms such as G42.
After Trump’s election, that stance reportedly shifted. The Journal said Tahnoon held multiple meetings with Trump and senior US officials. Within months, the administration committed to allowing the UAE to secure hundreds of thousands of high-end AI chips annually.
World Liberty and the White House have denied any link between the undisclosed stake sale and US policy decisions, and spokespeople said Trump was not involved in the deal and that it conferred no policy influence.
Despite that scrutiny, the project continues to expand its product set, as World Liberty Financial recently launched World Liberty Markets, an on-chain lending platform built around its USD1 stablecoin, which went live on Monday.
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