Filenews 13 January 2026
By Martina Di Licosa
A few months after Trump first expressed interest in U.S. control of Greenland, some of the world's richest people—including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg—began making strategic investments on the mineral-rich island.
Ronald Lauder, heir to Estée Lauder's estate, is considered the man who gave Trump the idea to occupy Greenland during his first term, former White House national security adviser John Bolton confirmed to Forbes.
According to the Danish newspaper Politiken, Lauder has invested in a non-profit freshwater bottling company in Greenland, which is co-owned by Jørgen Wæver Johansen, local chairman of the ruling Siumut party and wife of Greenland's foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg have invested since 2019 in Kobold Metals, which is conducting research in Greenland to locate rare earths, with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI also invested in Kobold in 2022.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of the giants PayPal and Palantir, funded in early 2021 the startup Praxis, which aims to build a technologically advanced "city of freedom" on the island.
When Lauder convinced Trump
John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser in the first term of the US president, told Forbes that Trump first discussed buying Greenland in late 2018, saying that "a prominent businessman he knew had suggested that the US buy Greenland" and later named Lauder as that businessman. The Lauder-Trump ties go back a long way. They attended the Wharton School of Business at the same time, and Lauder has been a funder of conservative candidates and entities for years (in March 2025, he donated $5 million to MAGA Inc., a Trump-backed super-PAC, according to Federal Election Commission data). Since then, Lauder has made no secret of his interest in Greenland and its resources. In an article published in the New York Post last February, he presented possible scenarios in which the United States could exert more influence over Greenland without buying the island (as the White House recently suggested). Among them, the conclusion of "a new tripartite agreement with Greenland and Denmark to formalize the cooperation in Greenland. Greenland has invested in a local freshwater bottling company and is involved in the construction of a hydroelectric power plant on Greenland's largest lake through Greenland Development Partners, a Delaware-based trust that owns a stake in Greenland Investment Group, chaired by former US Deputy Secretary of State Josette Sheeran.
What do we know about other billionaire investments?
Bezos, Gates, and Bloomberg first invested in Kobold in early 2019, when the company completed its first round of funding. The investments were made through Breakthrough Energy, a fund managed by Gates, with the aim of "accelerating innovation in the field of green energy and developing the industries of the future". The fund also participated in Kobold's third round of funding in December 2024, with the company's valuation reaching $3 billion. dollars, according to a press release from the same. In 2022, Altman participated through the Apollo Projects fund in Kobold's second round of funding. In that round, the company raised $192.5 million. dollars. A document recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Kobold is in the process of raising additional funds, meaning it could reach out to billionaires again, now that Greenland is in the spotlight. None of the billionaires mentioned in this article responded to Forbes' request for comment.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has publicly and repeatedly expressed his support for the possibility of Greenland being annexed by the US. Last January he wrote on X: "If the people of Greenland want to become part of America, which I hope they do, they will be welcome."
Lauder's investments are unlikely to have "any financial substance," points out Marc Jacobsen, an Arctic security expert and associate professor at the Royal Danish College of Defense. "What matters here is the close relationship with the decision-makers in Greenland. This is a strategy aimed at gaining control." Jacobsen told Forbes that he has noticed a more pronounced American presence in Greenland in recent years, in part due to direct flights New York-Nuuk (the capital of Greenland). "There are more Americans in Greenland than ever before... it can be difficult to know if they are only tourists or if they are also interested in strategic investments," notes Jacobsen.
