On January 16, 2025, four days before Trump's second inauguration, Aryam Investment, a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, agreed to pay $500 million for 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by members of the Trump and Witkoff families. Tahnoon is the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser, the manager of its largest wealth fund and the brother of its president. Eric Trump signed the deal. The Wall Street Journal reported it on January 31, 2026, a year later. The buyers paid up front, “with $187 million going to Trump family entities and at least $31 million going to Witkoff family entities,” CNN reported, citing the Journal; Trump's 2025 financial disclosure later put the total to Trump family entities at $263 million, CNBC reported. The deal made Aryam World Liberty's largest shareholder, and two senior officers of Tahnoon-backed companies joined its board.
Tahnoon also chairs MGX, an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm. On May 1, 2025, at a crypto conference in Dubai, World Liberty's Zach Witkoff announced, “We are excited to announce today that USD1 has been selected as the official stablecoin to close MGX's $2 billion investment in Binance.” The $2 billion was an investment in Binance, not in World Liberty. World Liberty earns the interest on the reserves behind its stablecoin, which Fortune estimated “could net as much as $80 million over a year” if Binance kept the coins.
The UAE wanted something the Biden administration had withheld: advanced American AI chips, which it had declined to provide over fears they could be diverted to China. The Journal reported that Tahnoon was seeking that access when the stake was signed. On May 15, 2025, two weeks after the MGX announcement, the White House announced a 5-gigawatt AI campus in Abu Dhabi to be built by G42, the state AI firm Tahnoon heads. In November the administration authorized G42 and Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN to buy advanced Nvidia chips, a reversal of earlier reluctance to sell directly to state-backed firms. No reporting shows the investments and the approvals were linked. CBS's 60 Minutes: “There's no evidence that the chips are related to the two billion in World Liberty crypto.”
World Liberty's spokesman: “Neither President Trump nor Steve Witkoff had any involvement whatsoever in this transaction and have had no involvement in World Liberty Financial since taking office,” and “Any claim that this deal had anything to do with the Administration's actions on chips is 100% false.” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly: “President Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.” The White House counsel said Witkoff has divested from World Liberty. Richard Stengel, an under secretary of state under Obama: “Never before has a foreign government official taken a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president's company.”
In August 2026 the Journal reported that StringZ Holding, backed by Tahnoon and co-investors, owns 49 percent of the holding company for World Liberty's planned trust bank, with an entity affiliated with the Trump family owning 38 percent (see Trump's Family Crypto Firm Wins Conditional Approval for a Federal Trust Bank Charter From a Trump-Appointed Regulator).
Correction (September 25, 2026): this entry previously dated the stake to January 2026 and the MGX announcement to May 2026; both happened a year earlier, and the stake was reported in January 2026. It described Tahnoon personally as the buyer; the buyer was Aryam, a firm he backs. It presented two phrases as quotations from ethics experts that were ABC's paraphrase of unnamed experts; they have been removed. And it rested on a single source; it now has more than ten.