The investment bolsters concerns about foreign influence that originally stemmed from a major investment by MGX, a state-backed UAE investment firm that boosted the market value of the Trump family’s stablecoin by nearly $2 billion overnight.
This is where it gets interesting. Within months of the deal, the Trump administration made policy decisions that benefited the UAE, according to the letter. In May 2025, it approved a $1.4 billion arms sale to the country, despite congressional concerns about weapons flowing to armed groups in Sudan, where more than 150,000 people have died.
That same month, Treasury created a “Known Investor Pilot” program to streamline investment approvals through CFIUS, a fast-track process that the UAE had lobbied for.
The Commerce Department also lifted Biden-era chip export restrictions, allowing the UAE to receive up to three or four times the number of advanced chips it could have previously imported. It authorized G42, a UAE AI firm headed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to receive 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips. The deal was worth over a billion dollars.
But U.S. intelligence officials have reportedly captured the G42, which provided U.S. technology used to improve China’s missile capabilities. Although G42 has reportedly committed to divest its Chinese holdings, reports suggest the firm sought to obscure its ties to Beijing by moving its business holdings in China to a new investment company.
