A workplace lawsuit has opened the lid on the little-known ownership structure of Insight Partners, an investor in OpenAI and Anthropic: It is now partially owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. Insight Partners is one of the biggest startup investors in the world, managing over $90 billion thanks to its bets on companies like Twitter, Wiz, Databricks and Anthropic — comparable in size to its noisier rivals Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Now, a new lawsuit and SEC filings show that it is in part owned by the government of Abu Dhabi via a private, Abu Dhabi-based investment firm called Lunate.  In the secretive world of venture capital, funds rarely disclose their own backers, who are known as limited partners. Increasingly, VCs are reliant on Middle Eastern sovereign wealth as a source of capital. But Insight’s relationship with Abu Dhabi goes one step further, where its government isn’t just providing money — it has quietly owned a stake in the management company itself since January 2025. The documents indicate it is a passive minority investment. One source close to the transaction described it as “low single digits,” and another said it was less than 2%. Forbes could not determine how much Lunate paid for it.  New York-based Insight joins one of a small handful of investment firms that have sold equity stakes to funds controlled by Middle Eastern governments, including private equity firms Silver Lake and The Carlyle Group. These investments are almost always described in regulatory documents as “passive” or “non-operational,” because having a more active role could run afoul of U.S. government restrictions around foreign investment. But in practice, equity stakes in top-tier investment firms are often a step toward a bigger strategic partnership. Potential perks: first-in-line access to deals or, in the cases of Silver Lake and Carlyle, massive co-investments down the line.  “You can feel good knowing you don’t have control, but that you’re attached at the hip with some of the brightest dealmakers and business-builders in the world,” Michael Rees, co-president at investment firm Blue Owl, said at a PitchBook event. Blue Owl has been one of the most active buyers of such fund stakes, and has teamed up with UAE-based funds for such deals.  The revelation about Insight’s ownership structure was made public thanks to a lawsuit filed in December by Kate Lowry, a former vice president at the firm. She sued Insight over wrongful termination and failure to prevent harassment. The former Facebook employee had joined Insight’s Bay Area office in 2022 and alleged that she had experienced harassment, discrimination and then retaliation for taking medical leave. Lowry’s attorneys claim that her employment was terminated in May 2025 after she complained over a cut to her compensation package. The case is ongoing, and Insight has previously strongly denied the lawsuit’s “baseless allegations.”  Insight Partners declined to comment. Read the full story on Forbes: By Iain Martin https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/03/abu-dhabi-stake-venture-capital-biggest-insight-partners/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices