Entrepreneur Adel Ali Bin Ali spotted wearing a Richard Mille

Adel Ali Bin Ali, the Qatari entrepreneur behind the Ali Bin Ali Group — one of the Gulf region's most diversified conglomerates — was recently photographed wearing the Richard Mille RM27-01 Tourbillon Rafael Nadal, a timepiece that sits at the technological outer limits of contemporary watchmaking. At a widely cited price of $2,000,000 USD, the sighting is a reminder that the Gulf's business elite remain among the world's most committed collectors of ultra-haute horology.

The RM27-01 was developed in direct collaboration with Rafael Nadal and introduced in 2013 as the culmination of Richard Mille's ongoing obsession with shock resistance. The movement's tourbillon is suspended within a cable architecture — using braided steel cables just 0.29 mm in diameter — that allows it to flex rather than fracture under extreme impact. Independent tests validated the assembly to 10,000 g of acceleration, a figure that redefined what a tourbillon could structurally endure. The manually wound caliber RM27-01 beats at 21,600 vph and delivers a 70-hour power reserve.

The case construction is equally uncompromising. Richard Mille deployed grade 5 titanium for the baseplate and bridges, paired with a case fashioned from NTPT (North Thin Ply Technology) carbon composite — the same layered filament material used in America's Cup yacht hulls and Formula 1 bodywork. The result is a case of extraordinary rigidity and negligible mass, with the entire watch weighing under 20 grams on the wrist.

From a collector standpoint, the RM27-01 is one of the most sought-after references in the brand's history. Production was extremely limited, and examples rarely surface on the secondary market. When they do, the asking prices reflect the scarcity: grey-market transactions have been documented well above the already extraordinary retail figure. The watch occupies a space where instrument and objet d'art converge, which is precisely why it attracts collectors of Adel Ali Bin Ali's caliber.

For Richard Mille, placement on the wrists of high-profile Gulf entrepreneurs is not accidental — the region has been central to the brand's growth story since the mid-2000s. Seeing the RM27-01 on Ali Bin Ali reinforces both the watch's trophy status and the continued gravitational pull of the Nadal collaboration for collectors who value performance provenance as much as aesthetic distinction.