G42, a startup in Abu Dhabi, has made itself into an up-and-coming technology conglomerate over the past six years, with a sprawling product portfolio that extends into large language models, human genomics and spacecraft. While mostly unknown outside of the Middle East, G42 has become intertwined with some of the biggest US technology and artificial intelligence companies, including Amazon.com Inc. and OpenAI Inc. A defining moment for G42 came on April 16, when Microsoft Corp. revealed a $1.5 billion stake in the company. “We choose Microsoft as our key partner,” Peng Xiao, G42’s chief executive officer, said in an interview with Bloomberg News ahead of the announcement. “We feel very privileged that they felt the same way.” The new relationship was remarkable to those who’ve been paying attention to G42’s rise. Delicate geopolitical dynamics have surrounded the organization from its inception. G42 isn’t a normal tech startup. Its chairman, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is a powerful member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and a critical figure in global finance and Persian Gulf security. G42 and its growing cast of related entities are all part of his $1.5 trillion corporate empire and serve as a plank for the United Arab Emirates’ plans to put AI at the center of its economic future. In the US, though, the most relevant matter is G42’s connections to China. The UAE company began as a data analysis and surveillance operation in a country where the lines between the state and the private sector are blurred and industry players have few qualms about working with Chinese businesses. G42 teamed up with Chinese medical companies on Covid-19 tests and vaccines, bought electronics equipment from Chinese suppliers and directly financed several Chinese startups, including TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd.
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