Gcore & Ezditek launch JV, to create AI factory in Riyadh
New AI factory to build, train and deploying generative AI solutions
#Riyadh #datacentres - Luxembourg-based global AI cloud solutions provider Gcore, and Saudi data centre leader Ezditek have announced a joint venture to provide high-performance artificial intelligence infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and create an ‘AI factory’ in Riyadh. The AI factory will build, train, and deploy Generative AI solutions locally and across the globe, helping to boost Riyadh’s position as a global hub for generative AI development.
SO WHAT? - The new joint venture solidifies the partnership agreement signed by the two companies in May this year, promising to deliver AI-ready infrastructure within 5 years across nine data centres in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam. Under the agreement, Gcore will provide cloud computing and infrastructure services for Ezditek’s facilities to serve growing data centre demands driven by Saudi Arabia’s growing efforts to develop and adopt AI solutions. The two companies expect to offer data centre capacity of 28MW in 2025, across the three cities. This week, Ezditek revealed that construction had begun on its flagship data centre, on a 35,000+ square metre plot located at the world’s biggest female university, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), in Riyadh.
Here are some more details on this announcement:
Data centre company Ezditek and global AI cloud solutions provider Gcore have launched a joint venture focused on providing high-performance AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The formation of the joint venture follows an partnership agreement signed in May 2024 and awaits final regulatory approval.
The new joint venture will develop an ‘AI factory’, which will build, train, and deploy generative AI solutions locally and globally.
Meanwhile, Ezditek has announced that it has broken ground on its flagship data centre facility, RUH01. Located on a 35,000+ sqm plot at Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) in Riyadh, the data centre is expected to go live during the first quarter of 2026.
Hosted at the RUH01 data centre, the AI factory will have access to tens of thousands of GPUs, enabling rapid development and deployment of generative AI and predictive analytics models.
RUH01 will allow 90% of Saudi Arabia's population to connect to it within 25 milliseconds, ensuring low-latency AI and cloud services.
RUH01 supports hyperscalers, enterprises, and cloud providers establishing operations in the Kingdom’s digital ecosystem.
Gcore’s global network includes 180 points of presence, with AI-enabled infrastructure spanning six continents.
ZOOM OUT - Saudi Arabia has made the adoption and development of AI a national priority and the Kingdom’s AI market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% until 2030. Meanwhile, the country’s Cloud-First Policy set out by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in 2019, has led to massive investment in cloud technologies and services, and the data centres to host them. Hyper-scalers Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Huawei, Microsoft and Oracle are all building national cloud capacity, with more than $15 billion in data centre investment expected by 2030. Huge investment is required, since Saudi Arabia has lagged in data centre and cloud capacity compared with Europe and the US. So, the race is now on for both cloud service providers and data centre operators to build out quickly and compete for market share.
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