Gulf money target data centers, niche assets in the US

Institutional GCC Islamic funds are rotating capital toward specialized data centers, logistics hubs and industrial infrastructure in the US beyond the traditional housing market. "A lot of Gulf capital is flowing into US AI and data center plays instead," observed Thom Polson, founder of Polson Real Estates.

Thom highlights how quasi-sovereign entities like Abu Dhabi's G42 were investing directly in massive technological projects, including TeraWulf’s 70-megawatt New York data center projected to bring in over $1.1 billion in contracted revenue over a 10-year infrastructure lease.

Bahrain-based Investcorp has, meanwhile, deployed over $600 million directly into US logistics hubs since December 2025. Some US$400 million went into an industrial real estate portfolio spanning key hubs like Sacramento, Atlanta, and the US Northeast corridor, while US$200 million was used to acquire diversified properties across major distribution hubs in Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, and Indianapolis.Similar large-scale institutional real estate deployments are accelerating rapidly across Texas and California.

This immense influx of Gulf capital is reshaping the scale of the cross-border investment ecosystem. "The larger the pool of Gulf capital gets, the bigger the deals have to be," Thom noted.

While large institutional investors swallow multi-megawatt data center deals, smaller Gulf family offices and private investors require different entry mechanisms to capture US real estate exposure.

Fintech companies such as EdificeX represent this transition, deploying a stable blockchain framework to architecture property equity into fractional digital shares. This automated deployment allows cross-border crowdfunding pools from the Middle East to fund niche US real estate operations directly.

“Tokenization introduces a unique opportunity that did not previously exist for values-driven investors in the Gulf region and elsewhere,” EdificeX CEO Souhayl Maronesy shared with IFN Investor. “The mechanism grants the ability to select the exact property they want to invest in, have a say in property-related decisions, and complete the entire investment process in just a few minutes.”

Souhayl said the EdificeX platform has already attracted international investors, and was currently in active discussions with several strategic partners across the Gulf region. “Once these partnerships are finalized, we believe the investment bottleneck that exists in the traditional implementation of Musharakah will cease to exist.” Established market leaders argue that deep corporate credit verification and regulatory scale remain vital during global capital transitions. Industry giants like UIF and Guidance Residential have already overseen more than $10 billion in parallel financial transactions.