What does power actually look like in 2026? If your imagination still conjures mahogany-panelled boardrooms and the faint rustle of bespoke tailoring, you have not been paying attention. These days, it looks rather more like this: a cluster of founders in crisp linen, huddled over cold brew on a Palm Jumeirah terrace, the Arabian Gulf performing its usual turquoise sorcery just beyond their iPhones.
It looks like sovereign wealth meeting start-up hustle; like policymakers who actually answer their WhatsApp messages; like the quiet, electric hum of capital deciding – in real time – where it wants to go next. This, rather than the stale platitudes of conventional conferences, was the scene at Taj Exotica Resort & Spa when Investarise Global convened its flagship Business & Investment Summit. And if you are still imagining the old version, well, that is rather the point.
The Business & Investment Summit, held across the resort’s sweeping venues, was never intended to be one of those numbingly predictable conference affairs where familiar talking points are recycled like stale canapés. Instead, it functioned as a finely calibrated mechanism for collision – between investors who actually deploy capital and entrepreneurs who genuinely build things; between policymakers who shape environments and founders who test their limits. The guest of honour, Her Excellency Shaikha Moaza Obaid Suhail Al Maktoum, lent the proceedings a significance that extended beyond ceremonial appearances; her presence signalled what close observers of this city have suspected for some time: that public–private collaboration here has evolved from rhetoric into an operating system.
One also noticed the quiet authority of Sultan Ali Rasheed Lootah moving through the crowd – a figure whose family name carries considerable weight in enterprise development, yet who conducted himself with the understated assurance of someone with nothing to prove. That, in essence, was the summit’s prevailing atmosphere: achievement without ostentation, ambition without vulgarity.
