IHC acquires 80% of Marlan Space in UAE new-space economy push

IHC, the Abu Dhabi-headquartered holding company valued at roughly $229 billion, has moved to acquire an 80% stake in Marlan Space through its wholly owned subsidiary International Tech Group SP LLC. The deal, subject to regulatory approvals, gives the Middle East's largest investment group a direct position in the fast-expanding new-space economy and marks one of the most significant sovereign-capital commitments to commercial satellite infrastructure in the Gulf to date.

Marlan Space is an investor-operator built around developing space systems, autonomous satellite operations and advanced compute from Abu Dhabi. Its most concrete asset is Orbitworks, a joint venture with US-based Loft Orbital that bills itself as the Middle East's first private space infrastructure company. Orbitworks operates an assembly, integration and testing facility at KEZAD, the Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi, where it designs, builds and operates satellite systems for regional and international customers.

An AI-enabled constellation at the core

The flagship programme is Altair, a multi-sensor Earth observation constellation combining optical, hyperspectral, thermal, infrared and passive radio-frequency payloads with onboard processing. The first Altair satellite is completed; additional units are being assembled in Abu Dhabi. The system's AI-enabled architecture is designed to process and deliver intelligence at the edge of orbit, reducing the latency between data capture and actionable insight, a capability with direct relevance to sectors from agriculture and urban planning to defence and maritime surveillance.

Hamdullah Mohib, CEO of Marlan Space, framed the deal in explicitly global terms: "We have built the company around a clear ambition to establish globally competitive space capabilities from Abu Dhabi and to connect the UAE with the best technology and expertise internationally. With IHC as our majority shareholder, we will have an even stronger platform to scale our capabilities, deepen our partnerships and pursue opportunities across the global space economy."

The partnership with Loft Orbital is a notable thread. Loft specialises in shared-payload satellites, standardised spacecraft infrastructure that allows multiple customers to deploy sensors in orbit without commissioning bespoke satellites. That model dramatically compresses the time and capital cost of constellation deployment, which is precisely the capability Orbitworks needs to compete internationally.

Sovereign capital meets the new-space economy

The broader strategic logic sits inside a structural shift in how Gulf sovereign and quasi-sovereign capital is being deployed. IHC's portfolio already spans artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and advanced technologies; adding satellite infrastructure creates a vertical integration pathway, ground data from orbit feeding AI analytics platforms feeding downstream commercial and government clients. That stack, if assembled coherently, is exactly the kind of cross-sector value network that distinguishes long-horizon sovereign investors from conventional private equity.

For the global new-space economy, GCC capital is becoming increasingly consequential. Launch costs have collapsed over the past decade, demand for satellite-derived data is rising across climate monitoring, logistics, precision agriculture and national security, and governments across the Gulf are competing to anchor sovereign space capabilities domestically rather than depend on imported imagery and communications. The IHC-Marlan deal accelerates Abu Dhabi's position in that race, while the Loft Orbital partnership gives Orbitworks a US technology anchor that sidesteps some of the export-control friction that complicates deeper defence-adjacent space programmes.

For cross-sector investors, the read-across extends beyond space hardware. Earth observation data feeds directly into AI inference pipelines, agricultural commodity risk models, insurance underwriting and infrastructure monitoring. A constellation like Altair, once at scale, becomes a data business as much as a hardware business, and that is where the long-run commercial value, and the investor thesis, ultimately lies. IHC's existing exposure to digital infrastructure and AI positions it to monetise that data layer in ways a pure-play space operator could not.

The transaction remains subject to customary regulatory approvals, with no closing timeline publicly disclosed.