“In terms of economic strategy, [the GCC countries have] gotten the message that oil is not going to be there for long,” says Adnan Mazarei, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former deputy director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department. “They've been aware that the geopolitical landscape is changing. They have a role to play by being a platform for various things in between these two poles: China versus the West.”
There are varied diversification efforts across the GCC countries. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have entered into agreements as part of the Trump Administration’s America First Investments to put more money into AI data centers and other technology innovations over the coming years. Saudi Arabia has been interested in becoming a hub where critical minerals are processed. And in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which lead the region in economic diversification, other growing industries include health services, health tourism, and regular tourism.
Developmental differences in each country have affected which non-oil industries excel. “The most profitable investments are still in energy,” says Mazarei, and an increasing share of their own energy use mix is renewables, which has also been a key part of their diversification strategy. States are investing more in renewable energy and green tech as they consider energy efficiency to meet their enormous electricity needs, and saving oil for exports, says Karen Young, political economist and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “There was a lot of inefficient power generation from oil that's being phased out,” she says. “That makes sense from a climate perspective, but also from a cost perspective.” For example, in late 2025, QatarEnergy (no. 1 in the country and no. 6 overall), signed a deal with Samsung C&T to build a 2,000MW solar facility in Dukhan that could supply 750,000 households with energy by 2030.
Banking and finance is the industry most represented on TIME and Statista’s list, with 15.5% of the companies. Bahrain was the first of the GCCs to develop its financial services sector, allowing private equity funds like Investcorp, an investment vehicle that connected Gulf institutions with global business opportunities, to flourish. Places like Abu Dhabi are trying to follow suit. In 2023, Bahrain-headquartered Investcorp spun out Investcorp Capital (no. 84 in the overall list) in an IPO on the Abu Dhabi stock exchange.
Top-ranked First Abu Dhabi Bank’s largest shareholder is the state-owned Mubadala Investment Company. State activity and investment has been behind the expansion of the real estate industry as well as the development of giga-projects. All of these projects are “big business,” Young says, and “the bank sector is doing a lot of lending to these projects.” According to a 2024 McKinsey report, GCC banks tend to be more profitable than their global peers because of a balance of good oil prices, stable domestic deposits, and ambitious public investment programs.
The GCC’s economic development plans have experienced disruptions this year from geopolitical conflicts, and in response, companies have had to pivot their plans. Aluminum Bahrain Alba (no. 1 in country and no. 51 overall), which has long been a driver of the country’s non-oil economy, has had to lower output to protect itself from attack, driving up global prices for the metal and creating supply uncertainties. There’s now new attention on transport and infrastructure in the region. Logistics giant, DP World (no. 2 overall), which has been influential in the region, is now planning on building new shipping ports and boosting its ground transport fleets to accommodate supply chain disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz.
