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A crypto venture linked to Donald Trump accepted a half-billion-dollar investment backed by an Abu Dhabi royal days before the US president’s inauguration.
The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) in January signed a deal with a group of investors backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser who also oversees a sprawling business empire. The deal was worth $500mn for a roughly 49 per cent equity stake in the company, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal.
WLF spokesperson David Wachsman said the company agreed to the investment “because we strongly believe that it was what was best for our company as we continue to grow”.
He denied that the investment had anything to do with an agreement to grant the UAE access to US artificial intelligence chips struck later in the year, but declined to give details of the deal.
“Any claim that this deal had anything to do with the administration’s actions on chips is 100 per cent false. The leftwing media is dishonestly pushing baseless innuendo in an effort to deceive the public and smear our company,” Wachsman said.
During a trip to the Gulf last May, Trump and his UAE counterpart Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan revealed plans to build the largest group of artificial intelligence data centres outside the US.
A planned 10sq mile UAE-US AI campus in Abu Dhabi is expected to have 5GW of data centre power — equivalent to more than 2mn of AI chipmaker Nvidia’s latest generation of GB200 chips.
The investment raises more questions about the fusion of politics and business during Trump’s second term.
WLF was set up in late 2024 by Trump’s three sons and Steve Witkoff’s sons Zach and Alex. Donald Trump is described on WLF’s website as the company’s co-founder emeritus, as is Steve Witkoff, who is the president’s Middle East envoy.
The WLF statement said neither President Trump nor Steve Witkoff “had any involvement whatsoever in this transaction and have had no involvement in World Liberty Financial since taking office”.
The White House said that the president “only acts in the best interests of the American public”, adding that his assets were in a trust managed by his children.
“The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” said David Warrington, White House counsel.
A person close to Steve Witkoff said his children run WLF and he has “nothing to do with it”.
“Steve was not involved in negotiations related to [Emirati AI company] G42. He was only briefed on these discussions, which is totally appropriate,” the person said.
Sheikh Tahnoon has spearheaded Abu Dhabi’s push into AI and been integral to its discussions with the US to secure Nvidia chips. He chairs G42 and MGX, a state-backed fund focused on AI.
Like other oil-rich Gulf states, the UAE, a traditional US ally, has actively courted Trump since he returned to the White House, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in the US.
During Trump’s visit to the Gulf last year, the US and the UAE announced plans to build a vast data centre campus in Abu Dhabi, boosting its ambitions to become a global AI hub as it sought to secure access to Nvidia’s chips.
Investment funds in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s wealthy capital, have also done deals with Trump’s family network.
Before Trump was re-elected last year, his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, Affinity Partners, raised $1.5bn from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and an Abu Dhabi fund linked to Sheikh Tahnoon.
In another business connection between Trump’s network and the UAE, Zach Witkoff announced last year that Abu Dhabi investment vehicle MGX had decided to use WLF’s USD1 stablecoin to close its $2bn investment in crypto exchange Binance.
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