[Bloomberg, Zainab Fattah]
Aman Group, which builds and operates some of the world’s most expensive hotels, is planning to raise as much as $2 billion from investors to help fuel the next leg of its global expansion.
The fresh cash will help the Switzerland-based company make progress on the 23 hotel projects it has under development, according to Chief Executive Officer Vladislav Doronin. The firm is also focused on expanding Aman Residences, lavish homes with hotel-level amenities that it is building around the world.
“We are working to expand the brand and we’re working with different investment funds and in negotiation with a few different groups,” Doronin said in an interview. “We’re looking for good, solid partners.”
The funding will come as wealthy travelers increasingly clamor for a chance to stay in one of Doronin’s ultra high-end properties, which include the star-studded Amangiri resort in a remote stretch of Utah as well as Aman New York, home to the city’s priciest hotel room. Aman Kyoto, with rooms from $2,675 a night, was recently named one of the world’s best hotels by Conde Nast Traveler.
With the fresh funds, Doronin is hoping to open more Aman properties across the Middle East and Africa. He’s also looking to expand the company’s new Janu line of hotels, which promise less seclusion in order to cater to a younger clientele that wants “a little bit more buzz,” he said.
“We are very strong in Asia and we also expanded a lot in America,” Doronin said. “It was logical for me to expand the brand in the Middle East, because we have a lot of clients who love Aman.”
The latest fundraising effort comes three years after Aman Group raised $900 million from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the London-based real estate group Cain International. That funding gave the company a $3 billion valuation at the time.
A year later, the hotelier secured another $360 million investment from Mubadala Capital and Alpha Wave Ventures, a private equity fund co-managed by US firm Alpha Wave Global and Chimera Capital – part of a business empire overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Aman Group got its start in 1988 when it opened its first resort in Phuket, Thailand known as Amanpuri, which still commands nightly rates of over $3,500 from its perch on a private peninsula overlooking the Andaman Sea. Doronin, for his part, says he remains the majority owner of the company, though he declined to offer more specifics on Aman’s ownership structure.
The investments from the Gulf funds have helped Aman get development going in countries across the Middle East, Doronin said. That includes multiple Aman Residences offerings, including a collection of$39 million mansions in Saudi Arabia’s capital and two luxury towers in Dubai.
The company is also building three of its Janu properties in the region, including a ISO-room hotel in Dubai’s financial district along with hotels in Saudi Arabia’s historic sites in AlUla and Diriyah. It’s also planning to open Aman Dubai, a private members club where guests will have access to a 350-meter stretch of private beach and a 2,850 square meter spa.
Aman hasn’t announced what the annual membership cost will be for the new club in Dubai, but a similar offering in New York commands a $200,000-a-year fee.
The company has another 39 projects in pre-development that have not been announced yet.
With Aman Residences, the company has already sold $5.7 billion of luxury residences over the past three years in destinations including the Maldives, Morocco, Indonesia and Mexico. The penthouse at the Aman New York alone sold for $135 million.
The company is now trying to replicate that model in Saudi Arabia. Already, about three dozen mansions are under construction in Riyadh’s Diriyah district. Aman has managed to sell around half of them for prices ranging from $35 million to $39 million each, Doronin said.
The two residential towers in Dubai will each contain 39 apartments, he said. The first tower has already been sold while sales of the second will commence in the coming months.
Aman is in late-stage discussions with its bankers about the structure of the latest fund, according to a spokesperson. The company plans to lean on both institutional investors and high-netÂworth individuals, the spokesperson said.
The company hopes to find backers in the regions where it’s anticipating strong demand for its hotels, the representative added. Aman has already fielded interest from several parties but it doesn’t plan to start those discussions until the fund is finalized and the process might not close until early 2026.
With the fundraising, Doronin is looking to capitalize on the surge in investor appetite for hotel properties around the world. In a 2025 survey of hotel investors, CBRE found that more than half of them favored upper upscale hotels while 30% found luxury hotels most attractive.
For now, Doronin says he isn’t worried about the possibility of a global recession sparked by US President Donald Trump’s tariff wars. For one thing, Aman caters to the richest 0.5% of the world’s population. That segment isn’t price sensitive, he said.
Aman, which is the Sanskrit word for “peace,” has made its name by building ultra-luxury properties that are often tucked into remote comers of the world. The company operates on 15 of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, including Aman Summer Palace which it says is just steps away from the East Gate of the eponymous palace that once accommodated guests of the Empress Dowager Cixi more than a century ago.
“We respect culture, nature and history – we are not greedy,” Doronin said. “Aman isn’t for quantity. It’s everything for quality.”
Read the original interview on Bloomberg.
