Mubadala maps out infrastructure and Asia plan

• $330bn of assets
• Asia investments to double
• Big infrastructure focus

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co has given a rare look into how it plans to allocate capital globally, outlining an infrastructure strategy that prioritises expansion in the US and Asia while becoming more selective in Europe, a senior executive said.

As one of the emirate’s three major state investment funds, alongside Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia) and ADQ, Mubadala plays a central role in directing Gulf capital abroad. Its updated approach highlights where the fund sees the strongest long-term opportunities in infrastructure investment.

Mubadala manages more than AED1 trillion ($330 billion) in assets across sectors including semiconductors, technology, life sciences and infrastructure. It has posted a 10 percent annualised return over the past five years, according to its 2024 financial report.

The fund has backed assets such as US-based Aligned Data Centers, Japan’s PAG REN I renewables platform and Germany’s energy-efficiency real estate company Techem. However, it discloses little about how it weighs risk, geography and return across infrastructure sub-sectors. 

Saed Arar, Mubadala’s executive director and head of infrastructure, said at Abu Dhabi Finance Week that its infrastructure playbook focuses on six priority sectors. These are: the energy transition, digital infrastructure, transport, power and utilities, and a growing category of industrial assets with “infrastructure-like characteristics” – such as its investment in Perdaman’s $4.2 billion urea plant in Western Australia.

“Somebody would say, well, what does a urea plant have to do with infrastructure?,” he said. 

“But if you look at it from a different perspective: [the plant has] a 20-year offtake and [access to] gas … if you look at it as an overall value chain, it is very critical for any economy to have food security.”

Urea is a source of nitrogen fertiliser, which is a critical component for agriculture. Perdaman’s plant uses natural gas as its primary feedstock, needed to make ammonia, which is then turned into urea.

Andrew Yates/Sportimage/Imago via Reuters Connect

Mubadala is also building exposure to digital infrastructure, with demand from artificial intelligence (AI) workloads – the computing tasks required to train or run artificial intelligence models – driving a new wave of investment. 

The fund sees data centres split between traditional cloud services and high-performance capacity tailored for AI computing. “There is no limit for it at this point in time,” Arar said. “We see more and more demand coming from hyperscalers wanting capacity to function and generate income.”

To target the opportunity, Mubadala launched MGX in March 2024, a subsidiary focused on AI-linked investments. “We will continue to support the digitisation of the world,” said Arar, “not only from a data centre perspective, also from a fibre optics perspective, telecom towers… [and] telcos, if the right opportunity presents itself.”

While the fund is allocating more capital to digital infrastructure, Arar said it remains cautious. “A decent chunk of it should go into data centres, but we need to be very careful,” he said.

Ara added that the US remains a key market for Mubadala given its broad infrastructure needs, particularly in AI and energy, while Asia is “growing at an accelerating pace”.

North America makes up about 40 percent of Mubadala’s wider portfolio, while Asia accounts for roughly 13 percent. 

The fund aims to raise Asia’s share to 25 percent over the next five to ten years, Mubadala’s head of Asia Mohamed Albadr told the same conference.

Mubadala’s recent deals in the region include its participation in an $8.3 billion acquisition of Chinese developer Dalian Wanda’s mall unit and a healthcare transaction in partnership with CBC Group involving UCB Pharma’s mature business in China.

In Europe, Mubadala is focusing on utility assets that support the shift away from coal and oil. “On the European front, we see that there is a little bit of a, not a slowdown, but it is slower than the other geographies,” Arar said.

“Energy transition, renewables is going to gain momentum. Storage, nuclear and gas are going to gain momentum.”

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Arar said global competition for infrastructure assets is rising as private equity and specialist funds scale up. 

The global competition for infrastructure assets is intense, driven by a massive global investment gap and a growing appetite from private investors for stable, long-term returns.

Assets under management in dedicated infrastructure funds have tripled since 2016, reaching over $1.5 trillion in 2025, according to a McKinsey report.

“We’re going to make sure that we take a piece of the cake,” Arar said.