Mubadala's head of ventures exits to launch Noha, seeded by his former employer

What's the deal? Ibrahim AjamiDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, head of ventures at Mubadala Capital, is set to leave the firm next year to launch his own fund, Noha, with a seed commitment from Mubadala, the Financial Times reported on 28 October (a scoop by Ivan Levingston and George Hammond). He had led the firm's venture platform since launching it in San Francisco in 2016.

Who is Ajami? He joined Mubadala in 2006 and built its ventures platform into a portfolio of more than 100 early and growth companies across technology and healthcare, backing names including SpaceX, Waymo and Stripe. Before that, he led Mubadala's semiconductor and advanced-technology strategy and was a founding member of chipmaker GlobalFoundries.

What's the target? Noha is targeting $500 million, with a "few hundred million" of that committed by Mubadala. Roughly 90% of the fund is earmarked for early-stage US AI startups, with the rest for startups in the UAE and elsewhere, and Noha pitching access to UAE capital, customers and compute as its edge.

Why now? The move comes as Mubadala keeps deploying venture capital in the region, leading CredibleX's $15 million Series A and co-leading Paymob's $35 million pre-Series C round, while also backing AI infrastructure firm Together AI.

What's the endgame? Mubadala's seed commitment positions Noha as a spinout with an institutional anchor, not simply a departing executive testing the market. The commitment also preserves a link between Noha and Mubadala's existing venture network.

The signal: The spinout underscores the UAE's rise as a global technology and investment hub, and Gulf capital's push to go direct into US seed-stage AI rather than only backing other funds — senior operators now spin out their own vehicles with sovereign backing rather than leaving the ecosystem.

Read more: FT · Ivan Levingston on X · Mubadala Capital leadership

Image: Mubadala's headquarters in Abu Dhabi. Credit: Christopher Pike/Bloomberg, via FT