Global Holding acquires majority of Marlan, linking low Earth orbit satellites to AI infrastructure

The Global Holding Company announced in Abu Dhabi a new investment expansion in the space sector, through its subsidiary International Technology Group acquiring an 80 percent majority stake in the UAE-based Marlan Holding. Marlan is the parent entity of Marlan Space, which specializes in space technology investments, and which launched in August 2024 the Orbit Works project valued at $100 million via a strategic partnership with the US company Loft Orbital to develop commercial satellites for low Earth orbit. This acquisition, disclosed by the company to the Abu Dhabi Securities Market without revealing its financial value, is subject to the relevant regulatory approvals.

This acquisition gives the Emirati group a direct foothold in satellite infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and emerging space technologies. The CEO of Global Holding, Sayyid Basir Shaib, explained that space is gradually becoming a pivotal element in the global technology landscape, with its applications extending across communications networks, Earth observation, data flows, and AI systems. The deal enables Marlan Space to leverage the group's capital solvency and operational capabilities to accelerate its next growth phase, as affirmed by its CEO Hamad Allah Mahb, who noted that having a majority shareholder of the group's size will strengthen opportunity capture withinGlobal Space Economyand expanding the scope of joint projects.

This move builds on early investment bets led by Global Holding in the same sector, having begun investing in the US company SpaceX in 2020 through the private equity fund Falcon C I 4, and injecting an additional $25 million in June 2022. The group, chaired by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, manages a massive network of more than 1,300 subsidiaries across multiple sectors and international markets. Its net profit posted a remarkable threefold annual increase in the first half of 2026, driven by a 34 percent revenue growth, and it invested AED 14 billion (approximately $3.8 billion) in sister companies, joint projects, and financial and real-estate assets.

The acquisition marks a qualitative shift in the perspective of decision-makers in the Gulf, Egypt, and the Levant on technology supply chains; space is no longer merely a sector for research or traditional communications, but has becomea layer of orbital computingIt feeds corporate AI architecture with real-time observation data and low-latency sovereign connectivity. For large enterprises operating in energy, logistics, and regional construction sectors, localizing the manufacturing and operation of low-orbit satellites reduces reliance on foreign commercial providers and delivers a reliable communications environment capable of continuously supplying geographic and climate AI models, thereby reshaping spending priorities on cloud-link networks and edge data centers.

If you lead a technical team or manage information infrastructure in the region, the practical message here is the need to begin reassessing data-collection and field-communication strategies. Space investment is no longer isolated from intelligent analytics tools and process automation; it has become an integral part ofthe sovereign infrastructure systemthat integrates with ground-based computing centers. Developers and engineers must prepare to embed space APIs and low-orbit data streams directly into training and inference pipelines, necessitating advanced competencies in processing space-borne signals and geographic data before they become a mandatory operational standard in business sectors.