Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed: The Spymaster and His Money

Last reviewed: 10 November 2026. Tahnoon remains the UAE’s national security adviser and chairs the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, G42 and MGX. The latest material change came on 8 November, when President Trump confirmed on 60 Minutes that he co-owns World Liberty Financial, the crypto company in which a Tahnoon-backed entity agreed in January 2025 to buy a 49% stake, and said: “Because I know nothing about it.” Pending: the Circle shareholder’s emoluments suit, Justin Sun’s sanctions motion against World Liberty, and the 6 April 2027 date by which G42 and Core42 must become US companies, or win fresh approval, to keep licence-free access to US AI chips.

This guide collects what is on the public record about Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan and what Bradley Hope’s reporting for WIRED, The New York Times and Whale Hunting has found. It is updated as the story moves.

Start here · Why he is called the spy sheikh · What our reporting found · Washington, 2025 to 2026 · Further developments · What is not known · Read the full reporting · About this guide

Start here

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates and a deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi. The name is also spelled Tahnoun, and he is often referred to as TBZ. He was born in Abu Dhabi in 1968, a son of the UAE’s founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, according to his official biography. He is a younger full brother of the UAE president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed; both are among the Bani Fatima, the six sons of Zayed’s most favoured wife, Sheikha Fatima, whom WIRED described as his most important heirs.

He also chairs much of Abu Dhabi’s money. He is chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the emirate’s largest sovereign wealth fund; of First Abu Dhabi Bank, the UAE’s biggest lender; of International Holding Company, a listed conglomerate that employs more than 50,000 people, according to WIRED; of the artificial-intelligence group G42; and of MGX, the AI investment vehicle Abu Dhabi set up in 2024. Bloomberg News reported in 2024 that he directly oversees an empire worth about $1.5 trillion, WIRED noted.

That combination is what makes him unusual. The official who oversees the country’s security services also controls a large share of its sovereign capital. Since 2024 that capital has moved into American artificial intelligence and, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, into businesses owned by the family of President Donald Trump.

His roles

He also founded the ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship, the grappling tournament, in 1998, according to his official biography. His first business vehicle, Royal Group, dates from the late 1990s, WIRED reported.

Why he is called the spy sheikh

Tahnoon became deputy national security adviser in 2013 and national security adviser in 2016. The post puts him over the UAE’s intelligence and security apparatus, and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal now routinely call him the “spy sheikh”.

The label also comes from the companies around him. WIRED’s 2025 profile traced Project Raven, a surveillance programme staffed by former US intelligence operatives that passed in 2016 to DarkMatter, an effectively state-owned Emirati firm, and reported signs that DarkMatter’s ultimate controlling party was Tahnoon’s Royal Group. Many of its pieces and staff later moved under G42, founded in 2018. G42 has denied any connection to DarkMatter.

The same profile described ToTok, a messaging app that shot up the app-store charts in 2019 while its data flowed to Pax AI, a company in the G42 orbit. A former G42 engineer told WIRED that the app’s calls and chats were analysed by AI for activity the government considered suspicious. ToTok’s representatives denied that it was spyware.

The story is personal for the author of this guide. In 2021 the Pegasus Project, a coalition of journalists, told Bradley Hope that his phone had been targeted by the UAE with Pegasus spyware in 2018, while he was reporting on the 1MDB scandal, which implicated Tahnoon’s brother Sheikh Mansour. The UAE denied targeting him, he wrote in WIRED.

What our reporting found

The chess computer

In the mid-2000s, a refrigerator-sized supercomputer in Abu Dhabi called Hydra was considered the strongest chess player in the world. WIRED reported that Tahnoon put up the money for it through Royal Group and played online tournaments with it, as a human-computer team, under the username “zor_champ”. “He loved the power of man plus machine,” one engineer told WIRED. “He loved to win.”

The bargain with his brother

When President Khalifa bin Zayed died in May 2022, the post of Abu Dhabi crown prince fell vacant. Whale Hunting reported at the time that the contest was between Tahnoon and Khaled bin Mohamed, the president’s eldest son, and that Tahnoon had been running something like a political campaign for the job, including lining up outside support, according to people familiar with it. The same article described an earlier understanding: in return for larger portfolios and more of the emirate’s wealth, Tahnoon would accept Khaled as heir (Who Will Be the Crown Prince?).

The outcome matched that account. Tahnoon became chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in March 2023, and on 29 March 2023 Khaled was named crown prince while Tahnoon and his brother Hazza were made deputy rulers (CNBC; Abu Dhabi Media Office). WIRED later reported that Tahnoon argued his case for more than a year, citing their father’s wishes on succession, before agreeing to set aside his ambition to be crown prince or ruler in exchange for vast power over the country’s financial resources.

The habits

Tahnoon is almost never seen without dark glasses. He wears them even at the gym, because of a sensitivity to light, WIRED reported. Visitors who get past his gatekeepers may be invited to cycle laps with him around his private velodrome before they talk business, according to the same profile. He has spent hours in a flotation chamber and flew in the health writer Peter Attia to advise on longevity, and a businessman told WIRED that he inspired Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to cut back on fast food and join him in a quest to live to 150.

Whale Hunting has reported that he eats one meal a day and controls a majority of the Italian bicycle maker Colnago (A Most Dangerous Spymaster; Who Will Be the Crown Prince?).

The jiu-jitsu came earlier. In 1995 he walked into a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym in San Diego, introduced himself as “Ben” and only later revealed he was a prince of Abu Dhabi, WIRED reported, citing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Eastern Europe. Three years later he founded the ADCC championship. Inside G42, staff sometimes call him “Tiger”.

The empire and its valuations

Whale Hunting’s January 2023 investigation, Doing Business with Sheikh Tahnoon, asked whether his empire, then valued by the Financial Times at $240 billion, actually makes money. A source described a typical Tahnoon investment to Whale Hunting: take a big stake, set an aggressive growth plan, then list the company on the Abu Dhabi stock exchange. The open question the piece raised is how much of the rising value reflects operating performance and how much reflects the weight of a powerful backer in a small local market.

From Huawei to Microsoft

G42 grew up with Chinese partners. WIRED reported that Huawei engineers moved freely through Abu Dhabi’s most sensitive technology sites early in the generative-AI boom, and that a G42 subsidiary, Presight AI, sold police surveillance software resembling Chinese systems. In August 2023 Washington restricted exports of Nvidia chips to the Middle East. In early 2024 G42 said it would sever ties with China and remove Chinese equipment.

The American deals followed. In April 2024 Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 for a minority stake, in an agreement brokered largely by Biden administration officials. That summer Tahnoon toured the United States, visiting Elon Musk in Texas, training jiu-jitsu with Mark Zuckerberg, meeting Bill Gates, Satya Nadella and Jeff Bezos, and holding talks at the White House with President Joe Biden. In September 2024 Abu Dhabi announced that MGX would join BlackRock, Microsoft and Global Infrastructure Partners to put more than $100 billion into data centres and power plants, much of it in the United States (WIRED).

Crypto

Whale Hunting’s August 2024 piece Snakes and Sheikhs followed Venom Foundation, a blockchain company that became a strategic partner of Hub71, the Abu Dhabi start-up hub backed by First Abu Dhabi Bank. Venom announced its liquidation in the Abu Dhabi Global Market in December 2023 and resurfaced in the Cayman Islands weeks later. In 2025 MGX invested $2 billion in Binance, the crypto exchange founded by Changpeng Zhao, a deal Whale Hunting covered in CZ’s Second Act.

Washington, 2025 to 2026

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Tahnoon’s money has become tied up with American policy on AI chips and with the Trump family’s businesses. The main events, in order:

• 16 January 2025. Aryam Investment 1, an entity backed by Tahnoon, agreed to buy 49% of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, for $500 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The paper reported that Eric Trump signed the deal four days before the inauguration and that about $187 million went to Trump family entities. The stake was not disclosed at the time (CNBC).
• 18 March 2025. President Trump hosted Tahnoon in the Oval Office, followed by dinner with Vice President JD Vance and Cabinet members. The UAE then committed to a ten-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework in the United States (White House statement; presidential documents). Abu Dhabi’s Media Office said the visit also included meetings with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the national security adviser Michael Waltz, the CIA director John Ratcliffe and David Sacks, the White House adviser on AI and crypto (Abu Dhabi Media Office).
• 1 May 2025. MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance was announced as being made in USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial (The New York Times).
• 15 May 2025. Presidents Trump and Mohamed bin Zayed unveiled the first phase of a five-gigawatt UAE-US AI campus in Abu Dhabi, to be built by G42 (US Embassy in the UAE). A week later OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank announced Stargate UAE with G42 (SoftBank).
• 15 September 2025. A New York Times investigation, co-written by Bradley Hope, reported that the Trump administration’s agreement to let the UAE buy hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips was negotiated alongside the Binance deal in USD1, and that some of the same people were involved in both. The Times found no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other (The New York Times; takeaways).
• September 2025. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Elissa Slotkin asked inspectors general to investigate the chip approvals (letter).
• October 2025. The Financial Times reported that US intelligence agencies had gathered information in 2022 suggesting that G42 gave Huawei access to technology that could help China extend the range of its air-to-air missiles. G42 called the allegations “false and defamatory” and said its relationship with Huawei, limited to cloud services, had ended in 2023. Huawei said there had been no transfer of technology that could be used for military purposes (EnterpriseAM, summarising the FT report).
• October 2025. President Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, which had taken MGX’s $2 billion investment in USD1 (Justice Department; AP).
• 19 November 2025. The Commerce Department authorised exports of advanced US chips to G42 and to Saudi Arabia’s Humain, in approvals covering the equivalent of up to 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell GB300 chips, on condition that both meet security and reporting requirements (Reuters; CNBC).
• 22 January 2026. MGX became one of three managing investors in TikTok USDS Joint Venture, the new owner of TikTok’s American business, holding 15% alongside Oracle and Silver Lake; ByteDance kept 19.9% (MGX; TechCrunch).
• June 2026. Bloomberg reported that Tahnoon had emerged as the UAE’s troubleshooter with Iran (Bloomberg).
• June 2026. Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, published a staff report, “American National Security for Sale”. It argues that the UAE-backed investment in World Liberty was followed by at least ten Trump administration actions benefiting the UAE, including access to advanced AI chips, and Senate Democratic leaders called for hearings. The report’s description of a possible “pay to play” scheme is the senators’ characterisation; it has not been tested in a hearing or in court (report announcement; call for hearings).
• 10 July 2026. The Commerce Department announced a rule, published on 14 July, that moves the UAE into Country Group A:5, alongside close US allies. It names G42 and its cloud subsidiary Core42 among the companies that may receive advanced AI chips without a licence, says the department will “favorably review” licence applications involving MGX, and cites the UAE’s support in the war with Iran. G42 and Core42’s status expires on 6 April 2027 unless they become US companies or win fresh approval (Federal Register; CNBC). Senator Warren called it a “corrupt deal” and pointed to Tahnoon’s World Liberty stake (Senator Warren’s statement). G42 told EnterpriseAM that it already has substantial ties to the United States and will comply with all applicable requirements; Bloomberg had reported that G42 held exploratory talks in September about selling a majority stake to a US company (EnterpriseAM).
• August 2026. The Wall Street Journal reported that StringZ Holding RSC, an Abu Dhabi company behind which stand Tahnoon and his co-investors, owns 49% of WLTC Holdings, the holding company for World Liberty Financial’s planned trust bank. An entity affiliated with the Trump family owns a further 38%. The bank had received preliminary conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (The Wall Street Journal; CNBC). In its 14 August decision the OCC said that conflict-of-interest and emoluments objections about World Liberty’s foreign investors were outside the scope of its review, because neither World Liberty Financial nor its foreign investors was a party to the application (OCC decision).
• 22 October 2026. J. Benjamin Greenberg, a shareholder and former employee of the stablecoin company Circle, sued on Circle’s behalf in federal court in Washington. The suit alleges that two deals involving Tahnoon, the 49% World Liberty stake and MGX’s $2 billion in USD1, were illegal foreign emoluments. The defendants are President Trump, World Liberty Financial, the envoy Steve Witkoff and four related companies. Circle said it had no part in the filing; World Liberty said the claims were without merit, and the White House called the suit frivolous. None of the allegations has been tested in court (CNBC; Spectrum News).
• 3 November 2026. Justin Sun, the Tron founder who is suing World Liberty in federal court in California over $45 million of frozen tokens, said his lawyers had asked the court to sanction the company and its lawyers. He says World Liberty first told the court it was a Florida citizen and disclosed UAE citizenship in its ownership chain only in August, then used that to argue the federal court lacked jurisdiction. World Liberty has called his case a “meritless PR stunt”; CoinDesk could not reach it for comment on the motion (CoinDesk; The Block).
• 8 November 2026. Asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes why a company partly owned by investors connected to the UAE government did not raise the concerns he would have raised about the Biden family, President Trump confirmed that he co-owns World Liberty Financial and said: “Because I know nothing about it.” He added that his sons run the company (CBS News transcript).

Further developments: checked 10 November 2026

ADQ folded into L’IMAD. On 30 January 2026 Abu Dhabi merged ADQ, the $263 billion fund Tahnoon had chaired, into a new vehicle called L’IMAD, chaired by Crown Prince Khaled (Semafor). The Arabian Gulf Business Insight read the move as the rise of a new generation in the emirate’s finances (AGBI). The announcement did not name Tahnoon.

A new long profile. On 1 October 2026 The Guardian published Jack Shenker’s long read “Fixer, financier, spymaster”, which puts the assets of Tahnoon’s Royal Group at $300 billion. In a statement to the paper, G42 denied that its origins lay in cyber-espionage or that it conducts or enables unlawful surveillance (The Guardian; syndicated text).

AI council. On 6 October 2026 he chaired a meeting of Abu Dhabi’s Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology Council to review the emirate’s AI programme (The National).

Iran war diplomacy. During the US war with Iran, senior US officials have dealt with Tahnoon directly. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with him on 18 August 2026 about Lebanon, Iran and freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz (State Department), and the envoy Steve Witkoff met him in Sardinia in early September to discuss coordinating economic pressure on Tehran, Anadolu reported, citing Axios (Anadolu). On 6 November he met Jonathan Powell, the UK national security adviser, according to his office (official site).

Official announcements are collected on the Abu Dhabi Media Office page for him.

What is not known

• Whether G42 and Core42 become US companies, or win fresh approval, before their licence-free access to US AI chips expires on 6 April 2027.
• Who Tahnoon’s co-investors in StringZ Holding are, the company that owns 49% of World Liberty’s planned trust bank.
• How the courts rule on the Circle shareholder’s emoluments suit and on Justin Sun’s sanctions motion against World Liberty.
• Whether the Senate holds the hearings that Democratic leaders have called for into foreign crypto deals with the Trump family.
• What role, if any, Tahnoon has in L’IMAD, the vehicle that absorbed ADQ; the January announcement did not name him.
• How much of the value of the companies he chairs reflects their operating performance rather than the weight of their backer, the question Doing Business with Sheikh Tahnoon raised in 2023.

Read the full reporting

• The UAE’s intelligence chief and his AI money, WIRED, January 2025, by Bradley Hope: the full profile: Project Raven, ToTok, G42 and the AI money
• Anatomy of two giant deals, The New York Times, September 2025, by Eric Lipton, David Yaffe-Bellany, Bradley Hope, Tripp Mickle and Paul Mozur: the UAE chip deal and the World Liberty deal, side by side
• A Most Dangerous Spymaster, Whale Hunting, December 2021: our first profile of Tahnoon and his ambitions
• Who Will Be the Crown Prince?, Whale Hunting, May 2022: the succession contest between Tahnoon and Khaled bin Mohamed
• Doing Business with Sheikh Tahnoon, Whale Hunting, January 2023: whether his empire actually makes money
• Rise of the Would-Be Philosopher King, Whale Hunting, March 2023: how the succession settled, and what it meant for Tahnoon
• The New Gulf Cold War, Whale Hunting, March 2023: rivalry among the Gulf states, and the intelligence truce Tahnoon helped broker
• Snakes and Sheikhs, Whale Hunting, August 2024: Venom Foundation and Tahnoon’s bet on crypto
• CZ’s Second Act, Whale Hunting, June 2025: MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance, paid in the USD1 stablecoin
• Fortunate Sons, Whale Hunting, October 2025: the Trump administration’s children and their deals, including MGX’s $2 billion in USD1
• A spymaster sheikh’s AI ambitions, TechStuff podcast, with Bradley Hope: 32 minutes on his path to power and the UAE’s place in the AI race
• Blood and Oil, by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck (paid link)

About this guide

This guide is maintained by Whale Hunting, the newsletter of Project Brazen. It draws only on published reporting and public records, each linked where it is used. Bradley Hope, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who lived in and reported from the UAE, has written about Tahnoon for Whale Hunting since 2021. If you have information or see an error, write to whalehunting@projectbrazen.com.

Lawsuits, congressional reports and senators’ letters are cited here as claims, not findings. Where the people and companies named have responded, their responses are included. Sources last checked 10 November 2026.

Update record: First guide prepared 3 November 2026. Revised 10 November 2026 to check developments to 8 November and for first publication. Revised 10 November 2026 to add the status line, jump links, open questions, reading notes and Fortunate Sons, and to set publication titles in italics.

More: every story we have tagged Tahnoon bin Zayed, and the other guides on the Investigations page.