THE NEXT FRONTIER

The world's richest Emirati billionaire, Hussain Sajwani, Founder of the DAMAC Group, is doubling down on digital infrastructure with a $20 billion U.S. data centre push through EDGNEX, while leveraging Al across his real estate empire. As global markets brace for volatility, Sajwani is building resilient growth from Dubai to the cloud.

- JAMILA GANDHI

In March 2025, when the U.S. government imposed a sweeping round of tariffs on Chinese, European, and Southeast Asian imports, the shockwaves were immediate. Markets recoiled, central banks scrambled to assess the longer-term implications, and global CEOs braced for what some dubbed “an economic earthquake.” The move, seen as a recalibration of American economic self-interest, threatened to disrupt key trade corridors and supply chains just as the world had begun stabilising post-COVID.

Yet not everyone is reading the signs with alarm. Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani, Founder of the DAMAC Group, sees this moment as one of global disruption—but also one of local opportunity. “Dubai always has benefited from crisis, challenges around the world,” he says. “The U.A.E. economy today is solid.”

His confidence is rooted in decades of navigating volatility. Sajwani—worth $10.2 billion as of April 2025 according to Forbes, which is double the $5.1 billion he was worth in 2024— launched his first business during the early 1980s oil crash, when prices dropped from $30 to $11 a barrel.

“That was a major impact on the economy,” he says. His catering company, focused on the oil and gas sector and clients like the U.S. military and Bechtel, taught him early lessons about market cycles and resilience. These lessons would serve him again in 2008 when the global financial crisis gutted Dubai’s property sector.

“The worst crisis in my life was '08. Dubai property was impacted the most. There were no buyers and no cash. I think with God’s mercy and with some hard work, we managed that.”

When COVID-19 hit, he was prepared. “We were very careful and cautious and implemented those lessons during 2011 to 2019,” the real estate veteran reflects. “So, when 2020 came, it was relatively very easy. We had proper cash, we focused on revenue, and so we were not impacted at all.”