Why some of world’s top billionaires bet on Dubai over Silicon Valley

As someone who’s spent the better part of two decades navigating global capital flows, building transformative developments, and forging partnerships with visionaries from the East and the West, I can say this with conviction: The new centre of gravity for wealth, innovation, and influence is not Palo Alto. It’s Dubai.

- BY NEERAJ MISHRA Special to Gulf News

This may come as a surprise to those who still see Silicon Valley as the epicentre of ambition. But those paying close attention will notice a quiet exodus of founders, fund managers, and ultrahigh-net-worth families looking to this Eastern hub.

Around 6,700 millionaires have migrated to Dubai in 2024, in a 102 per cent growth between 2014 and 2024. The city is positioned to potentially surpass established hubs like London and Paris.

In Dubai, deals are ‘supercharged’. Emirati Sovereign wealth funds, like Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Mubadala, co-invest, co-strategise, and catalyse growth in ways that private capital elsewhere cannot.

Worth noting that three out of the dominant Gulf Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) which manage around 40 per cent of the world’s SWF assets are from the UAE (ADIA, Mubadala, and ADQ).

I've personally witnessed projects go from concept to reality in a fraction of the time it would take in California or Europe, simply because the state as well as the private sector are synchronised towards national ambition.

Fleeing founders