A UAE royal takes a 49% stake in the family crypto firm

What happened

World Liberty Financial is the crypto venture the Trump family launched in October 2024 with the Witkoff family. On January 16, 2025, four days before the inauguration, Eric Trump signed an agreement selling 49% of the company to Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi vehicle backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s national-security adviser and the brother of its president. The price was $500 million, half paid upfront. The deal was not announced.

The Wall Street Journal disclosed the deal on January 31, 2026. It reported that $187 million of the first payment went to Trump family entities and at least $31 million to entities tied to Steve Witkoff, who became the president’s Middle East envoy. Executives of G42, Tahnoon’s AI company, took board seats at World Liberty.

In May 2025 the administration announced a framework giving the UAE access to advanced AI chips; in November 2025 it approved chip sales to G42, previously restricted. Also in May 2025, another Tahnoon-led firm, MGX, used World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance.

Who benefited

The Trump family’s entities received $187 million from the first installment, and the Witkoff family’s entities at least $31 million. World Liberty Financial gained a sovereign-backed shareholder and board members from G42.

Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure later listed $262.5 million in proceeds from selling World Liberty equity, $65.6 million from WLF Holdco and $196.9 million from Stablecoin Holdco. The form does not name the buyers, so the $187 million the Journal traced may be part of that total. The disclosed $262.5 million is the figure counted here: the sum of the form’s two equity-sale lines, $65.625 million plus $196.875 million, which is the Trump family’s own disclosed share of the proceeds rather than the $500 million deal price or the Journal’s $187 million.

Who wanted something

Sheikh Tahnoon and his companies wanted advanced chips. G42 had been blocked from buying advanced American AI chips under the prior administration because of its past ties to Chinese firms. Within a year of the stake purchase, the chip restrictions were reversed and sales to G42 were approved.

Who lost out

Export controls on advanced chips are a national-security decision. The company that bought 49% of the president’s family firm, in a deal kept secret for a year, was approved to receive the chips those controls had withheld. The record shows the sequence, not a proven exchange; both the White House and World Liberty deny any link.

Why it matters

A foreign government’s security chief paid $500 million into the president’s family business before he took office, and the payment was hidden for a year. The buyer’s company then got a policy change it had sought for years. The payment reached the Trump family directly, not only the venture. Those are the facts that conflict-of-interest and emoluments rules exist to catch.

Sources The Wall Street JournalThe BlockCointelegraphReutersU.S. Office of Government Ethics (primary)