Explore every episode of the podcast The Unphiltered Take

MENA raised its biggest AI fund yet last week in Saudi Arabia.

While in the last six months, VC M&A exits across the region fell to 16, down from 48 in 2025. So does the region have an exit problem, and where does its liquidity come from now?

In this episode: why Friday's jobs shock flipped the Fed from cuts to a possible hike, and why expensive money is now the weather for everything, including exits. Why the Gulf is deploying its biggest checks ever, and doing it outward, with $15B of deals closing at LEAP in a single day.

And the payload: the three exit doors, IPO, M&A and secondaries, all jammed at once. The 2,626-to-8 funnel and why chasing unicorns was the wrong target. Why DPI is plumbing, not performance. And three things government can actually do about it.

New episodes every Monday. Follow the show, and send your take to the comments.

Data: MAGNiTT.

MENA AI crossed $1B for the first time. But ten companies took most of it. Nine raised in the last 18 months. Four in the last three. Here is what that concentration means, why Kevin Warsh made a hinge point out of it at Jackson Hole, and the three Gulf sovereigns quietly sitting inside every frontier AI lab.

In this episode:

• Nvidia Q2 and the ACIE segment: sovereign AI printing on the income statement
• Kevin Warsh at Jackson Hole and the scarce asset list he read out
• MGX, QIA, PIF/HUMAIN: three sovereigns, three strategies, one trade
• MAGNiTT H1 2026 AI Venture Capital data: pure AI at three times what it raised in all of 2022
• Why this cycle is structurally different from every previous MENA venture cycle
• The question I am taking to Silicon Valley next week

Send questions to philip@magnitt.com

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$1.65B of MENA venture dry powder. 88% still sitting. Fund formation down 63% since the war started. So who fills the gap over the next 18 months?

Last week markets looked flat. It really wasn't. Bitcoin's best week in two years, gold up 5%, every safe haven finished green while equities finished red. Treasury Secretary Bessent doubled long-dated buybacks, yields dropped, and Bitcoin, gold and treasuries all rallied at the same time despite being three assets that are supposed to offset each other. That is the debasement trade lighting up in real time. Ray Dalio put his stamp on it Friday. US debt crossed $40 trillion.

In this episode, Philip covers:

• Why last week wasn't flat, and the three questions every fund manager in his network is actually asking
• The UAE–Iran trade break after the missile strike, and why the oil response matters more than the price move
• Three fiscal responses across Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and what each is doing on the LP side through QIA Fund of Funds, SVC and Jada, DFDF and Mubadala
• MAGNiTT data on regional fund formation over five months since the war versus five months before, and where the $1.65B of dry powder actually sits
• A constructive conversation on the four LP channels that could fill the gap over the next 18 months: family offices, corporates, international FDI, and endowments

MAGNiTT's Five Months On report dropped last week. Newsletter linked below.

Send your questions to philip@magnitt.com. Best answers shape next week's episode.

Something happened this weekend that almost nobody in regional venture is watching.

The 60-day free-transit clause in the June 17th US-Iran MOU quietly expired. There is no successor deal. Iran is signalling transit fees. The White House says fees are unacceptable. And in 15 days, September arrives and the international community is expected back in the Gulf.

This is not a headline that moves the S&P. It is a headline that decides where regional private capital sits for the rest of the year.

In episode 2, Philip walks through why sustained high oil is a two-sided compression on MENA private capital, unpacks the five pressure points from the new MAGNiTT Impact of Regional Conflict on VC report, and lands on what regional GPs, founders, and international LPs can actually do in the next 60 days.

In this episode

• Why last week was the quietest of the year on the tape, and why that is not the story
• The June 17th MOU, the 60-day clock, and what expired this weekend
• Two-sided compression: why the sovereign oil windfall is not reaching venture
• The five pressure points from the new MAGNiTT report, five months in
• MGTI at 95.2 while the S&P sets records: the decoupling made visible (report here)
• Three concrete moves for GPs, founders, and international LPs before September

Companion piece to this week's #unphiltered insights newsletter. Subscribe on LinkedIn

Send your questions and views to philip@magnitt.com. The best ones get read on next week's show.

Summer is supposed to be the quiet season. It was anything but...

In this first episode: the two weeks where the market broke, got a head-fake on oil, then round-tripped all the way to record highs on the back of a weak jobs report. My read on rates and oil. And the part almost nobody translates, what all of it actually means for MENA.

In this episode:

- The round trip: the worst Dow day since April 2025, then six straight sessions to records

- Why a jobs print of minus 23,000 sent stocks higher, not lower

- My call on rates (no hike this year) and the one risk I'm actually watching: oil

- MENA's very different market: the MAGNiTT Tech Index down 4.6% in July, with no AI names to ride the trade

- H1 venture: funding down 22%, deal count down 41% to a multi-year low, and why the money masks the real story

- Regional capital stepped up as international pulled back, and why the UAE's headline number hides real concentration

- Three questions I'm carrying into the second half

By the numbers:

- S&P 500 +3.58% on the week, a record close; Nasdaq +5.19%

- Brent crude −7.29%

- MENA H1: $1.35B funding (−22% YoY), 214 deals (−41% YoY)

- Two mega-deals took 36% of all H1 capital

Got a question on markets, venture, or the region? Send it to philip@magnitt.com. I pick two or three every week and answer them on the show.

Read the full written edition in the #unphiltered newsletter, and follow the show so it lands in your feed every Monday.

Markets, money, and geopolitics. Unphiltered.

Venture and index data via MAGNiTT.

The trailer for The Unphiltered Take with Philip Bahoshy.

Everyone tells you what the markets did. Almost no one tells you what it means for MENA markets. Every Monday, one unfiltered read on global markets, the private capital moving through the Middle East and emerging markets, and the geopolitics tying them together. From an operator inside the market, not an observer on the sidelines.

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