HODLER INVESTMENTS, a UAE based investment company, headquartered in the Dubai, which includes in its portfolio energy, AI, and digital asset mining startups such as PermianChain, Brox Equity and others; and Abu Dhabi’s EHC Investment which leads multiple businesses with operations and investments across the energy, infrastructure, firefighting technology and system integration services have signed a strategic partnership to launch NEXGEN.

NEXGEN will support the creation of a compliant digital energy market to supply critical energy infrastructure that will monetize wasted energy such as flared gas in the UAE, KSA, and Egypt with the aim of hosting global data center operators, reducing carbon emissions and contributing the Digital Energy Infrastructure (DEI) Fund, a local decarbonization innovation fund.

The UAE is a strong supporter of the decarbonization initiative. Over the past 15 years, the UAE has invested more than US$40 billion in clean energy projects. Globally, the UAE supports green infrastructure, investing approximately $16.8 billion in renewable energy projects across 70 countries, primarily in developing nations. It has also provided over $400 million in aid and soft loans for clean energy initiatives.

Moustafa Rashad, Chief Executive Officer of EHC Investment added, “Our partnership with HOLDER INVESTMENTS will solve various challenges facing the energy sector in MENA. We believe that modern technology coupled with smart capital can accelerate decarbonization and address the renewable funding gap. This partnership will address market challenges of commercializing wasted and underutilized energy, while streamlining regulatory compliance for this newfound digital energy market, ensuring compliance with key systems and controls.”

Mohamed El Masri, Managing Director of HOLDER INVESTMENTS, stated, “Our strategic alliance with EHC Investment will accelerate our mission to build distributed energy infrastructure to power compute clusters that optimize wasted energy resources and build equitable energy infrastructure that strengthens the regional position for integrating data mining systems that support a sovereign digital economy.”

The strategic partnership with EHC Investment comes after HODLER announced its ongoing plans for a $500 million Digital Energy Infrastructure (DEI) Fund with the participation of UAE based GEWAN holding. The DEI will be established as a closed-ended Fund, subject to compliance and regulatory approvals. The DEI Fund has already secured soft commitments from lead investors and in-kind contributions in addition to offtake partners seeking energy and connectivity for A.I. and digital asset mining operations.

Ahmed Ebrahim, Managing Director of Hodler Investments, explained, “Through this strategic partnership with EHC Investment, we are ensuring that the evolving regional market for modern data center applications will be built on equitable energy systems that will power on site, and remote data mining farms, including edge computing, bitcoin mining, AI and other critical compute applications.”

Ali Al Gebely, Managing Director of EHC Holding, stated, “We are very pleased to have signed this strategic partnership with HODLER Investments, given the growth that we are witnessing in the MENA region when it comes to the digital economy incorporating AI applications, Blockchain, IoT and others. The partnership is aligned with our goal of shaping a clean energy transition for a sustainable future. We believe public and private investments play a critical role in driving innovation.”

Alaa Al Ali, Founder & Group CEO, Gewan Holding comments, “We are proud of our direct affiliation with Hodler Investments which resulted in the ongoing establishment of the Digital Energy Infrastructure Fund to support such innovative initiatives as we look to streamline sustainable capital to accelerate decarbonization projects in the region, enabling carbon offset opportunities and optimized cash flow from energy assets.”