Conversation with Youssef Salem – MasterMinds

Today on MasterMinds, we meet a financial leader whose career sits at the intersection of capital markets, technology, and global-scale execution. Youssef Salem, CFO of ADNOC Drilling—the world’s largest integrated drilling company—and Chairperson of Enersol, a global energy AI platform, represents a new generation of leaders shaping how finance, energy, and innovation converge.

With a career defined by scale and impact, Youssef has held pivotal roles across some of the most transformative organizations of the past decade. From serving as CFO of AIQ, MENA’s first AI unicorn, to becoming the youngest CFO on both Nasdaq and ADX at Swvl, his journey reflects a rare ability to navigate high-growth environments, public markets, and complex global operations. Earlier, his 13 years in investment banking saw him execute over $150bn in capital raises, M&A, financings, and restructurings across more than 60 landmark transactions.

Beyond the executive role, Youssef is deeply embedded in the region’s innovation ecosystem—as Founder of Qora71 (now Stryde71), Entrepreneur in Residence at Hub71, board and advisory member across multiple tech companies and funds, and Adjunct Professor of Practice at the American University in Cairo. A CFA Charterholder, Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, and a Forbes Middle East 30 Under 30 alumnus, his path reflects a mindset rooted in discipline, ambition, and long-term value creation.

Whether leading at the helm of publicly listed giants or supporting the next generation of technology ventures, Youssef believes that lasting impact is built where financial rigor meets bold innovation—and where leadership is measured not just by growth, but by legacy.

I started in Actuarial Science because I loved building clean models around uncertainty: risk, probability, and long-term outcomes. That training wired me to think in scenarios, not single-point forecasts.

From there, I leaned into corporate finance and transactions early, then eventually moved into operating roles where I could own outcomes, not just advise on them.

Becoming a CFO “young” was never the goal on its own. The goal was to keep compounding responsibility: first mastering the technical craft, then learning how to lead, and finally learning how to make decisions when information is incomplete and stakes are high. Over time, that path took me through public markets and high-growth tech, including CFO roles tied to both Nasdaq and ADX.

Energy is still a fundamentals business: safety, uptime, execution, cost discipline. AI does not replace that. It upgrades it. The real shift is moving from reactive operations to predictive operations, and from experience-based decision-making to data-augmented decision-making. In finance, the transformation is equally real: better forecasting, sharper capital allocation, faster risk signals, and tighter performance loops. The winners will be the companies that integrate AI into workflows, not just slide decks.

By focusing on markets and products with strongest unit economics, tightening cost structure, prioritizing highest quality contracts, and building operational discipline. It is about consistent execution.

Swvl today is positioned as a tech-enabled mobility provider with a strong emphasis on contracted, recurring revenue and core market performance. Recent disclosures show improving profitability, including positive net income reported in 2025 periods, alongside revenue growth.

Three big lessons:

• Public markets are a different sport: the cadence and scrutiny are not the same as private rounds.

• Narrative must survive in stress: your story needs to continue under stress, not only under growth.

• Predictability is critical: Beats and raises and predictability become product features in public markets.

• Listed, government-backed: the CFO is a steward. Governance, disclosure, predictability, and capital-market credibility are everything. The cost of mistakes is amplified.

• Unicorn / late-stage: the CFO is a translator and architect.

You translate growth into unit economics and build systems that survive scrutiny: audits, controls, investor narrative, capital strategy.

• Early-stage / high-growth: the CFO is part-finance, part-ops, part-strategy. Cash runway is oxygen.

The best regional AI startups can compete globally when they do three things: anchor on a world-class problem with real budgets, build differentiated data access or proprietary workflow integration, and commercialize beyond the home market early.

The gap is rarely technical alone. It is usually distribution, packaging, and enterprise sales excellence.

Yes. The region has real advantages: ambitious national strategies, access to meaningful use cases (especially in energy and government services), and improving capital depth.

The constraint is usually talent density and go-to-market maturity for global scale, which is solvable with the right ecosystems and incentives.

Going public rewards:

• repeatable economics.

• consistency in reporting and forecasting.

• and management teams that operate under scrutiny.

It taught me pattern recognition under pressure: what actually moves stakeholders, how capital behaves in stress, and how to separate signal from noise. It also taught me that the “right answer” financially can still fail if you ignore incentives, timing, and execution realities.

At the scale of ADNOC Drilling, the biggest financial challenges are:

• Capital allocation at industrial scale: choosing where each incremental dollar creates the highest risk-adjusted value.

• Cash flow discipline across cycles: managing volatility without sacrificing long-term capacity and capability.

• Balancing growth with returns: expanding in a way that keeps ROIC logic intact, not just top-line ambition.

• Transparency and governance: public-market expectations raise the bar on controls, disclosure, and predictability.

AI has become decisive in two ways. First, it changes what “good” looks like operationally: optimization, predictive maintenance, drilling performance, safety analytics.

Second, it changes what “good” looks like as an investment: defensible data moats, integration into mission-critical workflows, and measurable ROI. At Enersol, the aim is to back technologies that can scale globally in energy services and deliver real performance advantages, not just interesting prototypes.

They prepare students on fundamentals, but fundamentals are not enough. Students need more applied work: real datasets, real business cases, exposure to product thinking, and comfort with ambiguity.

Finance is becoming more cross-functional, and education has to reflect that reality.

I actually use it to my advantage. Being young makes for a nice story, a conversation opener, a ‘cute’ moment, and everyone likes a good story.

• Communication that simplifies complexity

• Leadership and talent building

• Negotiation and stakeholder management

• Systems thinking and operational understanding

• Tech literacy • Calm judgment in stressful situations

They can coexist, but only if governance is designed for speed. The mistake is treating governance as bureaucracy. Good governance is a decision-enabler: clear thresholds, clean data, and accountability that lets you move faster with confidence.

I believe syndicates are a powerful layer in early-stage investing because they can bring operator expertise, networks, and speed. I do not think they replace funds. I think they complement them, especially when the syndicate is disciplined, thesis-led, and aligned on governance.

I look for clarity on value creation:

• What pain is solved?
• Why are you uniquely able to solve it?
• What is the proof that customers will pay repeatedly at scale? Then I look at the team’s ability to learn fast and execute cleanly.

Not growing fast enough. This is venture at the end of the day and venture is all about growth as long as it’s sustainable and at the right economics.

Abu Dhabi is a magnet that offers a full stack: licensing, talent pathways, capital access, credible customers, and a community that helps founders land quickly. Hub71 plays a real role as an orchestrator of that stack, especially by bridging founders with enterprise opportunities and capital partners.

I expect three shifts: AI becomes embedded in field operations and safety systems, not treated as a standalone initiative. Capital allocation gets more data-driven, with sharper performance visibility and faster portfolio rotation.

New platforms emerge at the intersection of energy services and advanced tech, with the region exporting solutions, not only importing them, especially given the scale of local use cases and ambition.