Saudi Arabia’s giant Neom project has had a rough year of headlines about cancelled contracts. But while critics focus on what’s been shelved, one part of the giga-project is quietly becoming the story that matters: Oxagon, Neom’s industrial hub on the Red Sea coast, just started building a massive artificial intelligence data-centre campus. If you’re watching where Gulf tech investment is heading next, this is worth your attention.
What’s actually happening at Neom’s Oxagon site in Saudi Arabia
In August, Neom hit its biggest delivery milestone yet: the $8.5bn Neom Green Hydrogen project began commissioning. That’s not a small thing. It signals Neom is shifting from a bold vision on paper to an industrial development that’s actually getting built, brick by brick, turbine by turbine.
This change in direction was made official back in April, when Public Investment Fund (PIF) governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan publicly threw his weight behind Oxagon. Since then, Oxagon has increasingly looked like the part of Neom getting the real momentum, while other parts of the giga-portfolio deal with contract terminations and scaled-back ambitions.
The clearest sign of this pivot isn’t in press statements. It’s in what’s physically breaking ground. And right now, the most eye-catching project at Oxagon is an AI data-centre campus being built by Humain, the PIF-owned AI company, working alongside digital infrastructure developer DataVolt.
Why this AI data-centre push matters for the wider GCC
Construction has already started on the first 100MW of what’s planned as a 360MW first phase. That’s just the beginning. The full campus is designed to eventually reach 1.5GW of capacity, building on an original 2025 agreement between Humain and DataVolt that’s backed by roughly $5bn in investment.
The site has real advantages. Oxagon offers pre-zoned industrial land, access to renewable power, and subsea cable connections linking directly to Europe and Africa. That combination is exactly what global tech firms look for when deciding where to place power-hungry AI infrastructure. The first 100MW is targeted to go live in 2028.
For readers in the UAE and across the GCC, this matters beyond Saudi borders. The region is in a race to become a global hub for AI computing power, and Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh are all competing for the same investors, talent and technology partnerships. A hyperscale AI campus at Oxagon, backed by sovereign wealth money and international infrastructure expertise, adds another serious contender to that race. It’s the kind of innovation news that signals where the next wave of Gulf tech investment and jobs could land.
It’s not just data centres either. Oxagon’s momentum extends to a new rail corridor being planned and a port that’s moving towards its next development phase. Put together with the green hydrogen plant and the AI campus, Oxagon is starting to look like Neom’s most credible flagship project, at a time when the wider giga-project has faced tough questions about scale and timelines, as detailed by MEED.
What to watch next: whether the first 100MW phase of the Humain-DataVolt campus stays on track for its 2028 target, and whether the momentum at Oxagon continues to outpace the rest of Neom’s portfolio. If it does, expect Saudi Arabia’s AI and industrial ambitions to keep drawing attention, and investment, from across the Gulf and beyond.
