Gulf players chase data center demand as AI race heats up

Al-Monitor Readers

Samuel Wendel

Senior Market Research Analyst, Al-Monitor

Mar. 15, 2024

Amazon is delivering new opportunities for Saudi Arabia’s digital economy: on March 4, the e-commerce giant’s cloud computing arm announced plans to launch data centers in the kingdom by 2026 alongside investing over $5.3 billion. Although mundane compared to glitzy mega-projects, such infrastructure is critical to developing Saudi Arabia’s digital infrastructure as it seeks to boost non-oil growth and become a technology hub. This comes as data centers (essentially warehouses filled with networked computers that process, store and share data) have emerged as an increasingly hot investment area in the Gulf and are now key to tapping artificial intelligence’s explosive growth. Wealthy Gulf states aren’t ignoring the opportunity: on March 11 the UAE revealed MGX, a new technology investment company targeting AI infrastructure, including data centers, that seeks to amass $100 billion in assets.