By Federico Maccioni
DUBAI, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia-backed artificial intelligence company Humain has partnered with digital infrastructure firm DataVolt to develop around 100 megawatts (MW) of the first phase of a planned data center at Oxagon, an industrial city under development in NEOM, on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast, NEOM said in a statement on Monday.
• The facility is expected to be available in 2028, integrating renewable energy sources, innovative cooling technologies, and high-performance computing clusters.
• It will form part of the 360 MW first phase of DataVolt’s planned AI data centre campus at Oxagon. The development is part of a wider 1.5 gigawatt (GW) AI campus.
• Firms expect the project to benefit from Oxagon’s pre-zoned industrial land availability, at-scale energy resources, and access to low-latency computing via subsea cable connectivity.
• Saudi Arabia and its Gulf peers are accelerating their AI build-out to capitalise on surging global demand for computing power.
• Set up last year and backed by Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund PIF, Humain has secured several agreements with global technology firms. It is targeting 6 GW of capacity by 2034.
• The kingdom is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars to transform its economy and cut reliance on oil revenue, investment in various sectors including AI.
• NEOM was unveiled a decade ago as a futuristic urban project part of the transformation but plans have been scaled back amid cost overruns, lower-than-anticipated global oil prices in recent years.
• Oxagon is set to host renewable‑energy manufacturing and AI‑driven industries, with a port that authorities are now positioning as part of a faster regional trading corridor amid the Iran war.
(Reporting by Federico MaccioniEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
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