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Indonesia’s Danantara Shifts to Investment Phase, Targets 7% Returns — Sovereign Wealth Fund Enters Deployment Era Under Prabowo’s Ambitious Vision

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The morning light over Jakarta’s financial district has a way of making ambition look achievable. In the gleaming corridors of the Danantara Indonesia headquarters — a building that barely existed eighteen months ago — a quiet but consequential shift is underway. The sovereign wealth fund that President Prabowo Subianto unveiled with enormous fanfare in February 2025 has spent its inaugural year doing something unglamorous but essential: building the institutional scaffolding that separates a serious fund from a political showpiece. Now, as Indonesia’s Danantara sovereign wealth fund enters its investment phase in 2026, the real examination begins.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Chief Investment Officer Pandu Patria Sjahrir declared that Danantara’s target for investment fund placements in 2026 is set at $14 billion — nearly double the $8 billion allocated across all of 2025. Kompas The capital acceleration is not simply a number; it is a declaration of intent. The governance year is over. The deployment year has arrived.

Year One: The Governance Foundation Nobody Talks About

Before you can deploy capital at scale, you need systems that can be trusted with it. That is the unglamorous lesson Danantara absorbed in 2025. Chief executive Rosan Roeslani acknowledged that a primary achievement of the first year was breaking down the siloed operations that had long plagued Indonesia’s state-owned enterprises, promoting greater transparency and internal value creation. Jakarta Globe

BCA Chief Economist David Sumual confirmed the picture candidly: Danantara’s main focus in 2025 was internal consolidation — restructuring efforts, organizational improvements, and recruitment of human resources — with no major projects having fully materialized by year’s end despite SOE dividends being reallocated to the fund. Indonesia Business Post

That candour from a senior domestic economist is actually a constructive signal. Unlike the opaque early years of Abu Dhabi’s IPIC or the dangerously undisclosed operations of Malaysia’s 1MDB before its collapse, Danantara’s leaders are at least publicly acknowledging the gap between aspiration and execution. The first year served as a necessary stress-test of internal architecture. The critical question, now that the architecture is nominally in place, is whether the deployment year delivers the returns its political patron is demanding.


The 7% Return Mandate: Prabowo’s Public Challenge

Few sovereign wealth fund leaders have their performance targets set quite so publicly — or quite so politically — as Pandu Sjahrir now does. President Prabowo Subianto has publicly set a target of 7% return on assets for the fund, a mandate that Sjahrir acknowledged directly, saying Danantara would gladly accept the challenge as it “searches for projects that can give higher returns with the same impact while improving standards.” Jakarta Globe

The 7% ROA hurdle deserves context. Indonesia’s current state-owned enterprise portfolio has historically generated returns on assets hovering near 1.88% — a figure that reflects decades of sub-optimal capital allocation, political interference in pricing decisions, and chronic underinvestment in productivity. Reaching 7% is not an incremental improvement. It represents nearly a fourfold leap in capital efficiency across a portfolio of more than 1,000 SOEs.

To understand whether the target is reachable, consider how the world’s benchmark sovereign funds perform. Singapore’s Temasek Holdings has delivered annualised total shareholder return of approximately 7% in Singapore dollar terms over its 50-year history — but this was achieved with an entirely different governance architecture, strict commercial independence from government policy directives, and a portfolio heavily weighted toward liquid, globally diversified assets. GIC, Singapore’s other sovereign vehicle, targets real returns above 4% over 20-year rolling periods while managing over $770 billion. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, a closer model given its hybrid development-investment mandate, has generated returns in the 8–12% range in its best years, but only after a decade of portfolio maturation and institutional discipline-building.

What Danantara needs — quickly — is a portfolio mix that can bridge the gap between its politically derived SOE inheritance and the commercially rational returns its mandate demands.

Shifting to Deployment: Bonds, Equities, and the Capital Market Play

In a presentation at the Indonesia Stock Exchange, Pandu Sjahrir confirmed that Danantara would begin investing SOE dividend capital in both bonds and equities through the capital market starting in 2026, with the explicit additional goal of deepening Indonesia’s relatively shallow domestic capital markets. Kompas

This two-pronged strategy is tactically sound. Fixed-income instruments — particularly Indonesian government bonds (SBN) and SOE-issued corporate bonds — offer predictable yields in the 6–7% range at current rupiah interest rate levels, immediately competitive with the ROA target. The equities component introduces both upside potential and volatility, but also provides the market liquidity and price-discovery function that Indonesia’s IDX has lacked for years.

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Economic observer Yanuar Rizky assessed that Danantara’s entry as a major institutional investor could have a positive stabilising effect on Indonesia’s capital markets, provided the fund maintains a clear distinction between commercial portfolio investment and politically motivated market support operations. Kompas That caveat is pointed. If Danantara begins purchasing equities to prop up falling SOE stock prices rather than to generate returns, it will quickly become both a market distortion mechanism and a fiscal liability.

Danantara is also considering taking a shareholder position in the Indonesia Stock Exchange itself through its demutualization process — a move that would simultaneously give the fund a structural role in market governance while diversifying its asset base into financial infrastructure. Kompas

The $14 Billion Deployment Pipeline: Sectors and Scale

The capital earmarked for 2026 will flow primarily from SOE dividends and will target sectors including renewable energy, energy transition, digital infrastructure, healthcare, and food security. Danantara is also evaluating opportunities beyond Indonesia’s borders — specifically in China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Europe — though domestic allocation remains the dominant priority. Asia Asset Management

Six major projects were scheduled for groundbreaking in February 2026 alone, including an aluminum smelter and smelter-grade alumina facility in Mempawah, West Kalimantan; a bioavtur production facility at the Cilacap Refinery in Central Java; a bioethanol plant in Banyuwangi, East Java; and salt factories in Gresik and Sampang designed to supply Indonesia’s chlor-alkali industrial base. Kompas Together, these projects form the visible edge of what Danantara describes as a $7 billion downstream industrialization push — Indonesia’s long-deferred attempt to stop exporting raw nickel, bauxite, and palm oil and start exporting processed value.

The downstream story matters enormously for return-on-assets arithmetic. A nickel laterite operation generates modest margins; a battery cathode facility or EV component manufacturer attached to that same ore base can generate returns in the 12–18% range at commercial scale. That is the logic threading through Danantara’s investment thesis — and it is the same logic that has made Indonesia’s nickel-to-battery downstream push a subject of intense interest among Japanese, South Korean, and European manufacturers watching their supply chains with growing anxiety.

CEO Rosan Roeslani has emphasized that 2026’s strategy is built on risk-managed deployment and long-horizon value creation, with investment screens tightened to ensure capital flows only to projects with clear commercial merit and measurable economic impact. GovMedia

Danantara vs. The World’s Great Sovereign Funds: A Benchmark Comparison

FundAUM (approx.)10-Year ReturnIndependence ModelPrimary Focus
Norway GPFG$1.7 trillion~8.5% p.a.Statutory independenceGlobal equities/bonds
Temasek (Singapore)~$300 billion~7% TSROperational independenceAsia equities
GIC (Singapore)~$770 billion4%+ realFull professional managementGlobal diversified
Mubadala (Abu Dhabi)~$300 billion8–12% (peak)Semi-commercialStrategic/development
Khazanah (Malaysia)~$35 billionMixedPolitical proximityDomestic SOEs
Danantara (Indonesia)~$900 billion AUMTarget: 7% ROAPolitical appointment-ledSOEs + strategic projects

The table tells a revealing story. Danantara is already one of the largest sovereign vehicles on earth by nominal AUM — but AUM and investable capital are very different things when the underlying portfolio consists largely of SOE assets that are neither liquid nor independently valued. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global can credibly report 8.5% annualised returns because its portfolio is marked to liquid global market prices daily. Danantara’s SOE assets are carried at book values that may significantly diverge from what arms-length buyers would actually pay.

This is not a fatal flaw — it is a governance design choice with profound implications for how the 7% target gets measured. If Danantara measures ROA against re-valued, market-based asset prices, the benchmark is genuinely demanding. If it measures against legacy book values, the headline number may look better while concealing underlying performance deterioration.

The Broader Economic Stakes: Indonesia’s Path Past the Middle-Income Trap

Danantara does not exist in isolation. It is the financial architecture beneath President Prabowo’s “Golden Indonesia 2045” vision — the aspiration to reach developed-nation status within a generation. The fund was explicitly designed to help accelerate the president’s target of 8% annual GDP growth by his term’s end in 2029, consolidating and streamlining SOE operations to unlock productivity gains that fragmented management had suppressed for decades. Fortune

Indonesia’s GDP per capita, currently around $5,000, needs to triple to reach developed-world thresholds. That requires sustained, compounding productivity improvements across agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and services simultaneously. Danantara — if it functions as designed — could accelerate this by directing capital toward infrastructure gaps, energy transition assets, and downstream industries that private markets have been too cautious or too short-sighted to finance at the required scale.

Prabowo’s pitch to American business leaders in Washington in February 2026 was explicit: all state-owned assets have been consolidated under Danantara to accelerate investment, and the fund will serve as a primary engine of Indonesia’s economic transformation. Jakarta Globe The geopolitical subtext was equally clear — Indonesia is positioning itself as a destination for capital diversifying away from Chinese concentration and seeking access to Southeast Asia’s 280 million-strong consumer middle class.

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Pandu Sjahrir, speaking at the South China Morning Post’s China Conference: Southeast Asia 2026 in Jakarta in February, framed the geopolitical dimension directly: “In the new geopolitical world, every country and every leader uses sovereign wealth funds as a geopolitical tool,” while insisting that Danantara must operate for profit rather than politics. South China Morning Post The tension between those two imperatives — geopolitical instrument and commercially disciplined investor — defines Danantara’s central challenge, and is one that even mature funds like Mubadala have never fully resolved.

Risks, Scrutiny, and the 1MDB Shadow

No serious analysis of Danantara can avoid the governance concerns that have trailed the fund from its inception. Following Danantara’s inauguration, the Jakarta Composite Index fell 7.1%, driven by continuous foreign capital outflows of approximately $622.7 million — a market verdict on investor discomfort with the fund’s legal structure and oversight architecture. East Asia Forum

The concerns are structural, not merely perceptual. Indonesia’s national audit bodies — the Financial Audit Board (BPK), the Agency for Financial and Development Supervision (BPKP), and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) — have limited ability to monitor Danantara’s managed assets. Audits can only be conducted upon request from the House of Representatives, creating an oversight model that is reactive rather than systematic. Wikipedia

Critics have pointed out that Danantara’s senior leadership emerged from political negotiation as much as merit selection — CEO Rosan Roeslani served as Prabowo’s campaign chief, while Pandu Sjahrir served as the campaign’s deputy treasurer. East Asia Forum These connections do not automatically disqualify either man — Temasek’s own senior officials maintain government proximity — but they demand an unusually clear demonstration of commercial independence before institutional investors will commit capital with confidence.

Economists have also flagged crowding-out risks: as Danantara absorbs SOE dividends and raises capital through bond instruments, private sector investment appetite may be compressed, particularly if Patriot Bond subscriptions divert capital that listed companies would otherwise have deployed for their own growth. Indonesia Business Post

The Patriot Bond programme itself has attracted commentary that is difficult to ignore. Financial analysts widely viewed the initiative — which raised over Rp50 trillion from Indonesia’s business elite — as carrying the implicit return of political goodwill rather than purely financial reward, describing it as a “loyalty test” for the nation’s conglomerates. Wikipedia These are not conditions under which a world-class sovereign fund typically operates.

Investor Outlook: What Global Capital Should Watch

For international investors, Danantara’s deployment year presents a calibrated opportunity set rather than a binary bet. The fund’s entry into Indonesia’s bond and equity markets will provide liquidity and potentially improve price discovery on SOE-linked assets that have historically been thinly traded. Indonesia’s sovereign bond yields — currently in the 6.8–7.2% range for 10-year instruments — already offer competitive real returns given the country’s current inflation trajectory, and Danantara’s institutional demand will provide additional market support.

The downstream projects represent a longer-dated opportunity. Investors with three-to-five-year horizons who gain exposure to Indonesia’s nickel-to-battery value chain — whether through listed SOEs, joint venture structures, or Danantara-linked project bonds — are positioning for a structural shift in global clean-energy supply chains. The risk is not the economics of the projects themselves; it is the execution timeline and the political discipline to resist using Danantara as a budget-substitute during fiscal pressures.

Danantara’s 2026 Corporate Work Plan, presented to the House of Representatives, emphasised that every investment must be “bankable and truly value-accretive” — a standard borrowed from the private equity lexicon that, if genuinely applied, would represent a meaningful departure from the historically political character of Indonesian SOE capital allocation. Danantara Indonesia

Whether that departure is real or rhetorical will become clear within the next eighteen months. The projects are breaking ground. The bonds are being issued. The capital is beginning to flow. And in a country of 280 million people sitting atop some of the world’s most valuable commodity and consumer market assets, the upside — if governance holds — is not 7%. It is considerably higher.

Prabowo’s fund has set the floor. The ceiling is a function of institutional integrity.

Conclusion: The Deployment Era Begins — And the Scrutiny Deepens

Indonesia’s Danantara sovereign wealth fund enters 2026 at an inflection point that will define its legacy for a generation. The governance infrastructure is nominally in place. The capital pipeline — $14 billion targeted for deployment this year — is the largest in the fund’s short history. The 7% return-on-assets mandate, set publicly by the president himself, is ambitious relative to current SOE performance baselines but achievable if capital is deployed into commercial-grade projects with rigorous discipline.

The fund’s peer group — Temasek, GIC, Mubadala, Norway’s GPFG — took years, sometimes decades, to earn the institutional credibility that translates into sustained performance. Danantara does not have that luxury of time. Indonesia’s growth aspirations are set on a compressed timeline, and the political expectations attached to this fund are enormous.

What sophisticated investors should watch: the actual returns posted in Danantara’s first audited annual report; the independence and credibility of whichever oversight mechanism emerges; the performance of the six downstream projects currently breaking ground; and whether the fund’s capital market activities in bonds and equities reflect commercial logic or political stabilization.

The fund carrying the weight of Indonesia’s Golden 2045 vision is now, at last, actively deploying. The test of whether Danantara becomes Southeast Asia’s defining sovereign fund — or its most cautionary tale — begins today.


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Analysis

Min Ah: The Global Impact and Rising Popularity of the K-Drama Star

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“Min Ah” is one of the most searched names in Korean drama, and it points to more than one actress. The one driving the biggest buzz right now is Shin Min-a.

Key Takeaways

  • Biggest news: Shin Min-a stars as Empress Navier in Disney+’s The Remarried Empress, which premieres November 4, 2026, per Soompi.
  • Cast: Ju Ji-hoon plays Emperor Sovieshu, Lee Se-young plays Rashta, and Lee Jong-suk plays Prince Heinrey.
  • Scale: the story is based on a web novel and webtoon that recorded about 2.97 billion cumulative global views as of July 2026, and it is Disney+’s first K-romance fantasy (SBS Star).
  • Name confusion: other well-known “Min Ah” performers include Kang Min-ah and Minah (Bang Min-ah) of Girl’s Day. This article explains who is who.
NameKnown forLatest news
Shin Min-aLeading roles in major dramas and filmsThe Remarried Empress (Nov 4, 2026)
Kang Min-ahActress represented by H&EntertainmentDrama Sympathetic Cells with Kim Myung-soo; premiere date announced June 2026 (MyDramaList)
Minah (Bang Min-ah)Former Girl’s Day member turned actressBorn May 13, 1993; Girl’s Day debut in 2010 (Dramabeans)

Shin Min-a’s Next Big Role: The Remarried Empress

Disney+ confirmed on August 26 that the series would premiere on November 4, releasing a teaser and character posters (Soompi). The story follows Navier, the “perfect empress” of the Eastern Empire, who is told by her husband that he wants a divorce after he falls for a runaway slave, Rashta. Instead of accepting defeat, Navier asks permission to remarry, choosing the prince of a rival kingdom.

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Release plan

According to industry coverage, the ten-part series will debut with a four-episode drop and then release two episodes each Wednesday through a November 25 finale, and it streams on Hulu in the U.S. (Resonate). The same report says the first three episodes will screen at the Busan International Film Festival, which runs October 6–15.

Why it matters

This is the clearest sign of how K-drama has become a global asset. Platforms are paying for fantasy adaptations of internet-born stories with huge built-in audiences, and they are casting established leads to carry them.

Why Shin Min-a’s Popularity Travels

  • Longevity. She has worked consistently in Korean drama since the early 2000s, and her credits on MyDramaList span more than two decades (MyDramaList).
  • Genre range. From romantic comedy to Netflix thriller Karma and a 2026 film, The Eyes, in which she plays dual roles (MyDramaList).
  • Global platforms. Disney+, Netflix, and Hulu give Korean series simultaneous worldwide releases.

The Other “Min Ah” Actresses

Kang Min-ah

A Seoul-born actress with credits since the 2010s. MyDramaList lists a 2026 drama, Sympathetic Cells, with Kim Myung-soo, whose premiere date was announced in June (MyDramaList).

Minah (Bang Min-ah)

She debuted with Girl’s Day in 2010, made her acting debut on the tvN variety program Roller Coaster, and later won a Best New Actress trophy at the 2013 Gwangju International Film Festival for the film Holly. She led the 2020 film Snowball, which earned a Screen International Rising Star Asia Award at the New York Asian Film Festival (Dramabeans).

How to Search the Right Person

Add the family name: “Shin Min-a,” “Kang Min-ah,” or “Bang Minah.” Spelling varies in English (Min-a, Mina, Min Ah), which is why results get mixed.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Min Ah in K-drama?

There are several, but the most prominent right now is Shin Min-a, starring in The Remarried Empress.

When does The Remarried Empress premiere?

November 4, 2026, on Disney+ (Soompi).

Who is in the cast?

Shin Min-a, Ju Ji-hoon, Lee Jong-suk, and Lee Se-young.

Is Min Ah the same as Minah from Girl’s Day?

No. Minah is Bang Min-ah, a different performer (Dramabeans).

How popular is the source story?

The webtoon had about 2.97 billion global views as of July 2026 (SBS Star).

Whichever Min Ah you were searching for, the pattern is the same: Korean drama talent now finds its audience everywhere at once.


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AI

Pakistan Warns UN Security Council of AI Risks to Global Peace and Equality

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UNITED NATIONS — September 24, 2026: Pakistan has warned the United Nations Security Council that the rapid and insufficiently regulated development of artificial intelligence could deepen global inequality while creating new risks to international peace and security.

Speaking during a Security Council briefing on “Artificial Intelligence and International Security,” Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar called for stronger international safeguards, regulatory frameworks and governance mechanisms to address the risks associated with increasingly powerful AI systems.

Dar emphasized that the international community needs coordinated action to establish guardrails around artificial intelligence, particularly as AI technologies become increasingly relevant to military decision-making, information systems and national security.

Pakistan Calls for International Guardrails on Artificial Intelligence

Pakistan’s intervention comes as governments and international institutions increasingly debate how AI should be governed across borders.

Dar stressed the importance of restraint and confidence-building measures in the military domain, particularly because AI-assisted systems could compress decision-making timelines and increase the danger of miscalculation.

The concern is significant because artificial intelligence is no longer confined to civilian applications. AI is increasingly being examined in relation to cyber operations, intelligence analysis, autonomous systems, information warfare and other security-sensitive areas.

The United Nations has also warned that AI can create substantial risks when technological development moves faster than international governance.

The UN’s existing AI framework emphasizes responsible, accountable, transparent and human-centered development, while calling for effective human oversight of AI systems.

Why AI Is Becoming a Security Council Issue

The Security Council has previously considered artificial intelligence as a potential factor affecting international peace and security, but the technology has developed rapidly since those early discussions.

A recent analysis by the independent Security Council Report identified several security implications, including AI’s ability to facilitate malicious cyber activity, accelerate the creation and distribution of misinformation and disinformation, and influence military operations.

The organization also highlighted concerns surrounding increasingly autonomous weapons systems, shortened decision-making timelines and questions about human oversight and accountability.

These concerns help explain why AI has moved beyond being primarily a technology-policy issue and increasingly become a subject of international security diplomacy.

The challenge for governments is that AI can simultaneously create opportunities and risks.

AI could help countries identify emerging conflicts, improve humanitarian operations, monitor ceasefires and analyze large quantities of information. At the same time, poorly governed systems could amplify security threats or make already complex conflicts more difficult to manage.

Pakistan Highlights the Global Inequality Dimension

Pakistan’s message to the Security Council went beyond military applications.

Dar also emphasized the need for AI development to be representative, transparent and inclusive, reflecting concerns among developing countries that the benefits of advanced artificial intelligence could become concentrated among a relatively small group of technologically advanced states and companies.

That concern is already reflected in the United Nations’ Global Digital Compact.

The Compact calls for closing digital divides, expanding access to the benefits of the digital economy and strengthening international governance of artificial intelligence. It specifically calls for full and equal representation of countries, including developing nations, in international AI governance.

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This makes AI access and governance part of a broader development question.

Countries with advanced computing infrastructure, large datasets, sophisticated research institutions and substantial private-sector investment are positioned differently from nations that remain dependent on imported technologies and have limited domestic AI capacity.

If that gap widens, AI could potentially reinforce existing economic and technological inequalities rather than reduce them.

UN Framework Already Calls for Inclusive AI Governance

The debate at the Security Council is taking place alongside a broader UN effort to develop international mechanisms for AI governance.

The Global Digital Compact, adopted as part of the Pact for the Future, established a framework for international cooperation on digital technologies and AI.

The United Nations has subsequently established an Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence and a Global Dialogue on AI Governance.

The first annual Global Dialogue took place in Geneva in July 2026, bringing together governments and other stakeholders to discuss international cooperation, AI opportunities and emerging risks.

The UN says the dialogue is intended to ensure that AI governance reflects the priorities of all nations rather than only those with the greatest technological capabilities.

For developing countries such as Pakistan, this process provides an avenue to raise questions about technological access, capacity-building, data governance and participation in international rule-making.

AI and Military Decision-Making Raise Particular Concerns

One of the most sensitive areas in the AI debate is military decision-making.

AI can process enormous volumes of information far faster than humans. That capability could potentially assist military planners and governments, but it also raises questions about what happens when decisions involving force are increasingly influenced by automated systems.

A shorter decision-making cycle can create pressure to respond before human officials have fully evaluated the available information.

That is why Pakistan’s emphasis on restraint and confidence-building is significant in the context of international security.

The broader UN position has also stressed the importance of retaining meaningful human control over decisions involving the use of force.

The central issue is not simply whether AI should be used in security applications, but how governments can establish accountability when AI-assisted systems contribute to consequential decisions.

Disinformation Adds Another Layer of Risk

AI-generated content presents another challenge for governments and international organizations.

Generative AI can make it easier to create convincing text, images, audio and video at scale. In a conflict environment, such capabilities could complicate efforts to distinguish authentic information from manipulated material.

The UN has identified misinformation and disinformation among the major concerns surrounding artificial intelligence, particularly where manipulated content can affect public trust, human rights or humanitarian operations.

For international institutions, the problem is therefore both technological and political: governments must develop mechanisms capable of addressing harmful AI-generated content without undermining legitimate expression or access to information.

Global AI Governance Is Becoming More Urgent

The current Security Council discussion reflects a larger international shift.

AI governance is no longer being discussed solely in terms of innovation, investment and economic competitiveness. Governments are increasingly considering questions involving national security, international stability, human rights, development and inequality.

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The United States and China, for example, continue to compete technologically while also discussing mechanisms for AI safety and communication.

Meanwhile, the UN is developing a more inclusive multilateral framework intended to give countries a role in shaping international AI governance.

That creates an important distinction between AI development and AI governance.

The first concerns how quickly capabilities advance. The second concerns the rules, safeguards and institutions that determine how those capabilities are developed and deployed.

What Pakistan’s Position Means for Developing Countries

Pakistan’s intervention highlights an issue that is likely to remain central to future AI negotiations: who gets to shape the rules governing artificial intelligence?

Developing countries have an interest not only in managing AI-related risks but also in ensuring access to the technology’s potential benefits.

The UN’s Global Digital Compact recognizes the need for capacity-building, technology cooperation and support for developing countries to access, develop, use and govern AI systems.

That approach is particularly relevant as AI becomes increasingly connected to education, healthcare, agriculture, financial services, public administration and economic productivity.

Without adequate access to computing infrastructure, skills, data and investment, developing countries could find themselves primarily consuming technologies designed elsewhere.

Pakistan’s call for representative and inclusive AI governance therefore places technological development and international security within the same broader conversation.

The Challenge Ahead: Rules That Keep Pace With Technology

The Security Council’s latest discussion illustrates the central difficulty confronting policymakers.

Artificial intelligence is developing faster than many traditional regulatory processes can respond.

International rules must address security risks without unnecessarily blocking beneficial innovation. They must also account for differences between developed and developing countries while maintaining fundamental principles such as human rights, transparency and accountability.

The United Nations’ emerging governance architecture is an attempt to address that challenge through scientific assessment, international dialogue and greater participation by countries around the world.

Pakistan’s intervention adds another voice to that debate, particularly on the consequences of unequal access to AI capabilities and the risks associated with AI-assisted military decision-making.

Conclusion

Pakistan’s warning at the UN Security Council underscores the increasingly international character of the artificial intelligence debate.

The issue is no longer simply how quickly AI can advance. It is also about how the technology is governed, who participates in setting the rules, how military risks are controlled and whether the benefits of AI are distributed broadly enough to avoid deepening existing inequalities.

As AI becomes more deeply integrated into security, economies and public institutions, international cooperation will become an increasingly important part of managing both its opportunities and its risks.

For Pakistan and other developing countries, the emerging global AI governance system will be particularly important because the rules established today could influence access to technology, economic opportunities and participation in future international decision-making for years to come.


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Finance

Jennifer Garner’s Latest Projects: Business Ventures Beyond Hollywood

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Most celebrity business ventures are licensing deals wearing a founder’s costume. The name goes on the label, the cheque clears, and an operating company nobody has heard of does the actual work.

Jennifer Garner’s is not that. On 6 February 2026, she rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange as Once Upon A Farm went public at $18 per share with a valuation of $724 million.

The company she co-founded is now a listed public entity with audited financials, a board seat in her name, and a stock price that has since gone down. That last detail is the most interesting part of the story.

Key Takeaways

What Once Upon A Farm Actually Is

The company sells organic, cold-pressed refrigerated food for children — pouches, smoothies, applesauce and oat bars — through grocery retail and direct-to-consumer channels.

It was founded by serial entrepreneurs Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz, with Garner and CEO John Foraker joining as co-founders two years later. Foraker’s background matters to the credibility of the operation: he ran Annie’s Homegrown for more than a decade and served as a president at General Mills.

Note: founding-date reporting varies between 2011 and 2015 depending on the source. Verify before publication.

The Financial Trajectory

MetricFigure
Annual revenue (yr ending Sept 2025)$225 million
Year-on-year growthOver 40%
CAGR since 2018More than 60%
IPO valuation$724 million
Capital raised$197.9 million
Shares sold by company~7.6 million
Shares sold by existing holders~3.4 million
Lead bookrunnersGoldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase

A compound annual growth rate above 60% sustained over seven years is not a celebrity endorsement outcome. It is a consumer packaged goods outcome — and CPG is one of the hardest categories in which to build distribution from scratch.

What Her Actual Job Is

This is where the Once Upon A Farm story diverges most sharply from the celebrity-brand template, because the terms are public.

The S-1 discloses that Garner serves on the public company’s board of directors and continues as co-founder and spokesperson — “Farmer Jen” — a role for which she was paid $1 million in the prior year, with $2 million to $3 million in expected annual compensation through 2028, separate from stock options and an IPO-linked bonus.

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She also worked the roadshow directly. Garner described the investor meetings to Forbes as rooms full of existing customers, noting that families already trusted the product.

That is a meaningful distinction for anyone assessing celebrity-backed companies. There is a difference between a founder who licenses a likeness and a founder who sits on the board, pitches institutional investors and has compensation disclosed in a registration statement.


The Mission Structure

Once Upon A Farm is a public benefit corporation — the “PBC” in its legal name — which means its charter permits management to weigh mission alongside shareholder returns.

Garner has framed the IPO itself as a mission decision. Selling to a major food conglomerate would have cost the existing team control of the business; a listing preserved it while raising capital.

The concrete expression of that mission is WIC certification. Getting products approved so low-income families can purchase them through the federal nutrition programme has been a stated priority, and the brand now holds that distinction in more than 20 states. Garner has called it the company’s north star.

It connects to a longer track record — she had been a trustee for Save the Children for several years before joining the company in 2017.

The Risks the Prospectus Discloses

A public listing forces disclosure that private celebrity ventures never face. Three risks stand out.

Tariff and sourcing exposure. The prospectus highlighted risks related to tariffs and trade barriers, particularly against Mexico and South America, from where the company sources a significant portion of its fruit and vegetable ingredients.

Key-person concentration. A brand built substantially on one founder’s public identity carries a risk no diversified CPG company does.

Acquisition framing. Ahead of the listing, Hedgeye analyst Bennett Cheer characterised the company as an acquisition “play” — a view that treats the IPO as a staging post toward a strategic sale rather than a destination.

The Post-IPO Slide, and What It Tells You

The stock’s path is the honest part of this story. Priced at $18, up 17% on day one, close to $25 within a week, then down roughly 15% for the year by August.

Garner’s stated response has been to ignore the daily price and focus on execution — her position being that the stock follows the mission rather than the reverse.

Whether or not one finds that convincing as investor communication, the underlying pattern is common and worth understanding. Consumer IPOs frequently pop on scarcity — the listing was described as a rare food offering that excited investors — and then reprice once the float settles and quarterly results replace the narrative.

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For investors, the lesson generalises. A founder’s celebrity generates demand at listing. It does not generate gross margin.

The Broader Commercial Portfolio

Beyond Once Upon A Farm, Garner’s commercial activity follows a consistent pattern: long-term brand relationships rather than one-off endorsements.

She has been the recurring face of Capital One’s advertising campaigns, continuing through 2026. She brokered Once Upon A Farm’s first sports sponsorship in 2024 — a multi-year deal making it Angel City FC’s exclusive children’s snack partner.

She was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 class of 2026 at age 54, alongside continued acting work.

What This Means for the Global Market in 2027

Coverage of celebrity businesses stops at the launch. Here is what actually determines outcomes.

Public listing is the real test of a celebrity brand. Private valuations are negotiated; public ones are voted on daily. Expect more celebrity-founded consumer companies to attempt listings after this precedent — and expect most to trade below their debut.

Governance disclosure becomes the differentiator. Once Upon A Farm published its founder compensation structure. Investors evaluating the next celebrity IPO should ask for the same and treat its absence as a signal.

Tariff exposure is the underpriced risk in food CPG. Companies sourcing produce from Mexico and South America face input volatility that margin models built in a stable trade environment do not capture.

The PBC structure will be tested. A public benefit corporation’s mission commitments have not yet been stress-tested against a sustained share price decline. Once Upon A Farm may become the case study.

Acquisition remains the likely endgame. If the Hedgeye thesis holds, a strategic buyer eventually acquires the brand. The question for shareholders is whether that happens above or below the $18 listing price.

Frequently Asked Questions

What company did Jennifer Garner found?

Garner is a co-founder and chief brand officer of Once Upon A Farm, an organic children’s food company. She joined in September 2017 alongside CEO John Foraker; the business was originally founded by Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz.

When did Once Upon A Farm go public?

The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker OFRM on 6 February 2026, pricing at $18 per share for a valuation of $724 million and raising $197.9 million.

How much revenue does Once Upon A Farm generate?

The company reported $225 million in annual revenue for the year ending September 2025, representing growth of more than 40% year-on-year and a compound annual growth rate above 60% since 2018.

Is Jennifer Garner paid by Once Upon A Farm?

Yes, and the terms are disclosed. She was paid $1 million in the year before the IPO, with $2 million to $3 million in expected annual compensation through 2028, separate from stock options and an IPO-linked bonus.


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