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This week on VC React, we dig into Anthropic’s Dario Amodei’s Gulf money u-turn, size up Elon’s Saudi megacluster ambitions, ask whether QR‑pay darling Qlub can outrun copycats, and weigh up 500 Global’s new Abu-Dhabi-based $300 million “Sustainable Growth Fund”.
Twelve months after bragging it had rejected GCC cash on “national‑security” grounds, Claude’s parent is whispering “yalla, habibi” to the very same sovereigns. Is this a principled rethink or pure hypocrisy? We ask how US politics, the TikTok precedent and a $100‑billion Gulf war chest are rewiring Silicon Valley’s “moral compass”, and what it means for MENA check‑writers trying to win earlier‑stage deals.
Elon’s X AI is weighing two Saudi partners: a small “ready‑now” facility and Humane’s giga‑site that could power Grok for a decade. Do you sprint for immediate compute or wait for scale? We debate which option wins, how cheap renewables flip the economics, and what Saudi engineers can actually build (instead of just watching from the bleachers).
Dubai‑born Qlub lands a $30 million Series B and is already live in 11 countries. Is table‑side QR checkout a defensible fintech wedge – or just a shiny feature Toast, Foodics or Stripe could clone overnight? We unpack the moat, the Mubadala cameo, and why diners who still say “check, please” might stall its mass adoption.
500 Global rolls out a $300 million “Sustainable Growth Fund” from Abu Dhabi, promising climate, food‑system and gender‑equity bets across Africa, India, Brazil and the Gulf. We weigh-up whether startup returns and SDG scorecards can really coexist, and what that signals for sovereign LPs hunting both impact and IRR.
This week’s guests:
