Riyadh just got a lot closer to becoming the Gulf’s AI powerhouse. Egyptian contractor Hassan Allam Construction and India’s Sterling & Wilson have landed an estimated SR750m ($200m) deal to build the first phase of a massive new data centre in the Saudi capital, and the numbers behind it are hard to ignore.
The project is being developed jointly by Saudi AI firm Humain and Center3, the digital infrastructure arm of telecom giant STC Group. It’s part of a much bigger plan announced back in December, when the two companies agreed to build AI-focused data centres across Saudi Arabia with a target capacity of up to 1GW. That’s enough power to run a small city, except here it’s all going toward training and running artificial intelligence models.
What’s actually being built in Riyadh, and why it matters for the GCC
The first phase alone will have an IT load capacity of 16.2MW. Once the second phase is done, total capacity at this single site will hit 50MW. To put that in perspective, the facility will eventually house one standard-density hall and four high-density halls, each rated at a hefty 11.2MW. These aren’t your average server rooms. They’re built specifically for high-density AI workloads, the kind needed for training large language models and running heavy-duty machine learning tasks.
The construction scope covers everything from civil and architectural work to the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems that keep a data centre running around the clock. Hassan Allam and Sterling & Wilson have 16 months to deliver phase one. That’s a tight but telling timeline, showing just how fast Saudi Arabia wants to move on its AI ambitions.
For businesses and investors across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf, this project is a signal. The region isn’t just buying AI tools from Silicon Valley anymore. It’s building the physical backbone, the data centres, power systems and connectivity, needed to host AI at scale locally. That matters because data centre location affects latency, data sovereignty and cost, three things that matter a lot to banks, government bodies and tech firms deciding where to run their AI systems. This kind of innovation news out of Riyadh shows the GCC racing to secure its own slice of the global AI infrastructure boom.
The bigger picture: Saudi Arabia’s 1GW AI bet
This Riyadh project is designed to work as a blueprint. According to the companies involved, the initial facilities will serve as a template for future rollouts as Humain and Center3 scale up toward that 1GW target across the kingdom. In practical terms, that means more contracts, more construction work and more opportunities for regional firms in engineering, logistics and energy supply chains.
The partnership brings together two very different strengths. Center3 handles the data centre operations and regional connectivity side, essentially making sure the facility can talk to networks across the region quickly and reliably. Humain, meanwhile, is responsible for aligning the physical design of these facilities with the actual compute needs of advanced AI systems, both today’s models and whatever comes next. The goal, as the companies put it, is high power density, low latency and resilient operations built specifically for mission-critical AI applications.
For everyday readers in the UAE and GCC, this might sound like a Saudi story, but it’s really a regional one. As more AI workloads get processed closer to home instead of in data centres in Europe or the US, it could mean faster, cheaper AI services for companies across the Gulf, from banks using AI for fraud detection to government agencies rolling out smart city tools. It also puts pressure on neighbouring markets, including the UAE, to keep pace with their own data centre and AI infrastructure investments.
What to watch next is how quickly this first phase comes online and whether the 16-month timeline holds. If it does, expect more announcements as Humain and Center3 push toward their 1GW goal, and keep an eye on whether similar large-scale AI infrastructure projects start popping up elsewhere in the Gulf. For the full story, MEED has the details on how this contract came together.
