"Investors basically ghosted," the unnamed founder said, describing the week the Iran war broke out and a $5 million funding round he had been preparing to close went quiet. He did not leave Hub71’s year-long program. He stayed and, he said, in the last couple of weeks the backers began answering the phone again — enough, he expects, to close the round in September.
That determination matters because Hub71 — Abu Dhabi’s seven-year-old entrepreneurial center — this week announced it had recruited 27 startups to its latest year-long intake, all from outside the UAE, and not one has dropped out despite the economic fallout from the war. Hundreds of attendees gathered at Hub71’s annual event in the city as founders and investors took stock.
The numbers give the announcement force: 27 foreign startups enrolled and zero defections while a regional conflict rattled markets. Hub71 is backed by sovereign investor Mubadala Investment Company and offers participating founders cash plus investor introductions in exchange for the option of future equity. The program’s model, executives say, is meant to buy time and market access for teams that have relocated to Abu Dhabi.
Hub71’s CEO framed the pitch to global capital in simple terms. "Abu Dhabi has helped investors expand their horizons beyond San Francisco," Ahmad Ali Alwan told the gathering, a line that underlined the hub’s effort to position the emirate as an alternative launchpad for international founders.
That positioning has commercial traction: some 50 family offices from the Middle East have partnered with Hub71, creating local pathways for introductions that founders said can be as valuable as straight financing. Several speakers at the event argued that Gulf startups are expanding even as global venture funding has contracted, pointing to deals and hiring that continued last year across the region.
The founder who described being ghosted spoke for a practical cohort: teams that have moved their operations to Abu Dhabi and are dependent on a mix of program support, local introductions and overseas capital. He said Hub71’s support — the cash runway and the investor meetings — kept his company in the room while his lead investors paused their outreach.
There is friction beneath the upbeat numbers. The initial silence from investors highlights how quickly geopolitical shocks can freeze rounds, and founders in the program say the pause changed the shape and tempo of negotiations even if it did not end them. A subset of backers began responding in recent weeks, but the founder’s experience illustrates the gap between capital availability and capital immediacy.
Context matters: Hub71 is part of Abu Dhabi’s broader push to diversify the economy and build local technology capacity rather than import solutions. The startups in the program are aimed at Gulf pain points and opportunities including financial inclusion, food security and longer lifespans — sectors where local investors see strategic payoff beyond pure financial return. Still, the full impact of the war on valuations and the pace of new investment in the emirate has yet to emerge.
The immediate takeaway is practical, not rhetorical: founders are staying put. Hub71’s latest cohort shows that foreign teams will relocate and remain in a Gulf program during a regional shock, and some investors will respond again once the initial uncertainty subsides. The next measure will be whether the founder who was briefly ghosted closes his $5 million round in September and whether those completed deals set valuation benchmarks for the market.
