Dubai Investment Fund (DIF), an investment and asset management company, is going forward with an investment in the wind energy project in the North Africa region. The project aims to generate 600 megawatts (MW) of clean and renewable energy, which is equivalent to the electricity needs of one million homes. Full details and the amount of investments are not disclosed yet, but this should be the largest investment in the wind energy sector this year.
Examination of DIF's past investments shows that the company focuses on investment in green energy and IT over interests in natural resources and oil. In 2002, DIF invested in stocks of Statoil and Petrobras. These are large oil and gas companies that are engaged in the extraction, processing, transportation and sale of oil and gas in Latin America, Africa, and Europe.
In 2003, DIF purchased shares of Energiekontor AG, which is involved in development and management of wind farms and solar parks. The same year, investments were made in shares of Dongfang Electric, one of the biggest manufacturers of power plant equipment.
During 2005-2006, the company continued investing in shares of green energy and eco-friendly companies. They were SunTech Power Holdings and SolarFun Power Holdings. In 2006, DIF also invested in IT sectors by purchasing shares and taking stakes in Google, Sony, Nvidia and Amazon.
In 2007, the company made investments in the enterprise segment and acquired shares of Cisco, one of the world's biggest manufacturers of networking hardware and telecommunication equipment. Also, investments were made in shares of Salesforce, SAP, and Adobe, which are focused on the production of software, cloud services and other IT products.
In 2008, the company placed a part of its capital into the stocks of TSMC — world's most valuable semiconductor company, and BP, which is a giant in the oil and gas markets. During 2010, the company made investments and took stakes in JinkoSolar, world's largest solar panel manufacturer, together with purchasing shares of Samsung, Tencent and China Construction Bank in 2011. By 2014, the company purchased additional shares of Brookfield Renewable Partners LP and also bought stocks of ArcelorMittal., the second-largest steel producer worldwide.
In 2015, the company added to its portfolio shares of other big companies in the renewable energy sector. They were Northland Power Inc., SolarEdge Technologies and Sunrun Inc. The same year, DIF also invested in stocks of Facebook Inc. Notable investments of the fund in 2016 and 2017 were made in the shares of companies from the IT sector, such as Qualcomm, Intuit, VMware and AutoDesk. At the same time, more investments were made in stocks of China Steel Corp., PayPal and Booking Holdings.
Acquiring shares of Shopify, HP, and Dell should be mentioned as the company's recent investments in the IT sector, made in 2020.
In addition, partial or full direct investments were made by DIF in a number of projects in educational, social, green energy and AI spheres. They were «Education for All», «Helping Hand», «Technology for Teaching» in 2004, «GLANA Waterwise» and FINEMI projects in 2005, «Skill Fuel» and «Kerne» in 2015, AI Lab in 2016, «Clean Wind», «Energies» and «The Next Shore» during 2019-2020.