A UAE-backed investment vehicle quietly agreed to purchase nearly half of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency startup linked to President Donald Trump, just days before he returns to the White House, in keeping with a Wall Street Journal report.
Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, signed a deal in January 2025 to purchase a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million, the Journal said, citing documents and folks accustomed to the matter.
Half of that quantity was paid up front, sending $187 million to corporations controlled by the Trump family, with tens of thousands and thousands more flowing to corporations linked to co-founders, including relatives of U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, the report said.
The agreement was reportedly signed by Eric Trump. The Journal reported that the deal had not been publicly announced, although World Liberty later revealed that the Trump family's stake had fallen sharply.
Tahnoon's ambitions grow after Trump's election
Tahnoon, the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates and the country's national security adviser, played a central role in Abu Dhabi's efforts to turn into a worldwide leader in artificial intelligence. Under the Biden administration, its efforts to secure advanced US-made AI chips have been limited amid concerns that sensitive technology could find yourself in China, particularly through corporations like G42.
After Trump's election, these efforts gained momentum. Tahnoon met with Trump and senior US officials several times, and inside months the federal government committed to giving the UAE access to a whole lot of hundreds of advanced AI chips annually.
Anatomy of the deal. Source: WSJ
The Journal reported that G42 executives helped run Aryam Investment 1 and took board seats at World Liberty as a part of the deal, making Aryam the startup's largest outside shareholder. Weeks before the announcement of the US-UAE chip framework, one other Tahnoon-led company, MGX, used World Liberty's stablecoin to finish a $2 billion investment in Binance.
World Liberty and the White House have reportedly denied any wrongdoing. Spokespeople told the Journal that President Trump was not involved within the deal and that it had no impact on U.S. policy.
World Liberty is facing calls for an investigation from the US
Last 12 months, Democratic senators called on US authorities to analyze alleged links between World Liberty Financial's token sales and sanctioned foreign actors. In a November letter to the Justice Department and Treasury Department, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed cited allegations that WLFI governance tokens were purchased from blockchain addresses linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group, in addition to corporations linked to Russia and Iran.
The controversy is exacerbated by WLFI's ownership structure, which provides Trump family-affiliated corporations control of the vast majority of token revenue. Lawmakers argue that this creates a direct conflict of interest since a lot of the proceeds from token sales flow to the president's family.
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