Key Takeaways
- • Activate, a US venture firm, has selected Doha as its first office outside the San Francisco Bay Area, under the Qatar Investment Authority's (QIA) venture capital program.
- • QIA's program requires managers to staff local offices with senior investment professionals and encourages relocating backed startups to Qatar, with incentives such as compute power.
- • Activate's backers asked that the Doha office invest from the same capital pool rather than a separate regional vehicle, per co-founder Anup Jacob.
- • QIA head of funds Mohsin Pirzada described the program as "commercially driven," with managers also held to development goals tied to Qatar's national strategy.
- • Talks with QIA began roughly a year before the announcement, and decision-making stayed on schedule despite the Iran war, according to Jacob.
Summary
Activate, a US venture capital firm, has chosen Doha as its first office outside the San Francisco Bay Area, according to a Semafor report. The move is tied to the Qatar Investment Authority's (QIA) program to attract venture firms to the emirate. QIA's venture commitments represent a small fraction of its $580 billion fund, but the program is part of a broader strategy to develop the local economy and gain access to emerging managers with the potential for outsize returns. The long-term goal is to build a venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem in Doha that helps Qatar generate more value from research and innovation.
QIA head of funds Mohsin Pirzada told Semafor that the program is commercially driven. "We're in the business of making money here," he said, adding that managers are also held to development goals linked to Qatar's national strategy. Under the program, managers must staff a local office with senior investment professionals. QIA encourages them to relocate portfolio companies to Doha, offering incentives such as compute power. Pirzada pitched Doha as a gateway market, describing it as "a four-hour flight that captures a population of 2 billion."
According to Anup Jacob, Activate's co-founder and managing partner, talks with QIA began about a year ago. Despite the breakout of the Iran war, decision-making remained on schedule. Activate's backers requested that the Doha office invest from the same pool of capital rather than a separate regional vehicle. The Doha team will seek deals in Qatar and across the Global South, and will steer portfolio companies toward the region's "much cheaper energy and much better access to compute," Jacob said. He added that QIA backing helps Activate win access to competitive deals, describing a CEO with an oversubscribed round who asked, "Why should I let you into my round?" Without such backers, he said, "our capital is just capital."
Haya Al Ghanim, Qatar funds director at QIA, acknowledged a learning curve for managers coming from abroad, noting that the most frequently asked question concerns the dress code. She said many managers end up investing more in Qatar than they originally planned: "Across all the fund managers, they come in with a plan of what they are committing to do in Qatar, but what I see from all of them is they are going beyond that."
QIA head of funds Mohsin Pirzada told Semafor that the program is commercially driven. "We're in the business of making money here," he said, adding that managers are also held to development goals linked to Qatar's national strategy. Under the program, managers must staff a local office with senior investment professionals. QIA encourages them to relocate portfolio companies to Doha, offering incentives such as compute power. Pirzada pitched Doha as a gateway market, describing it as "a four-hour flight that captures a population of 2 billion."
According to Anup Jacob, Activate's co-founder and managing partner, talks with QIA began about a year ago. Despite the breakout of the Iran war, decision-making remained on schedule. Activate's backers requested that the Doha office invest from the same pool of capital rather than a separate regional vehicle. The Doha team will seek deals in Qatar and across the Global South, and will steer portfolio companies toward the region's "much cheaper energy and much better access to compute," Jacob said. He added that QIA backing helps Activate win access to competitive deals, describing a CEO with an oversubscribed round who asked, "Why should I let you into my round?" Without such backers, he said, "our capital is just capital."
Haya Al Ghanim, Qatar funds director at QIA, acknowledged a learning curve for managers coming from abroad, noting that the most frequently asked question concerns the dress code. She said many managers end up investing more in Qatar than they originally planned: "Across all the fund managers, they come in with a plan of what they are committing to do in Qatar, but what I see from all of them is they are going beyond that."
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