#SaudiArabia #LEAP5 - Public Investment Fund-owned AI company HUMAIN and Saudi data centre operator DataVolt have officially broken ground on a 100MW facility at Oxagon, beginning the construction on a planned 360MW computing campus. The project aims to deliver high-density computing infrastructure to power complex artificial intelligence workloads, with the initial 100MW capacity scheduled to go live in 2028. The facility relies on renewable energy, advanced cooling systems, and subsea cable connectivity across the Red Sea.
SO WHAT? - The Oxagon data centre project seems to supercede the initial $5 billion bilateral deal struck between DataVolt and NEOM at LEAP 2025. Following its launch in May 2025, PIF-backed HUMAIN stepped in as the master planner for Saudi Arabia’s national AI compute infrastructure requirements. By folding DataVolt's Oxagon buildout into its master strategy, HUMAIN ensures that physical gigawatt-scale capacity directly connects to sovereign computing platforms, Arabic-first AI models, and regional enterprise demands.
KEY POINTS:
Saudi Arabia’s national AI company HUMAIN has expanded its agreement with AI infrastructure developer DataVolt to construct a 100MW high-density facility at Oxagon in NEOM.
The buildout represents the initial 100MW portion of a broader 360MW first phase at Oxagon, which itself serves as the foundation for a planned 1.5GW campus.
Engineering teams expect the initial 100MW capacity to be online by 2028, supplying compute power to both domestic and global enterprise clients.
Located inside NEOM’s industrial hub at Oxagon, the facility benefits from direct access to renewable power sources, pre-zoned land, and subsea data cables connecting Europe to Africa.
The facility incorporates purpose-built cooling technologies alongside high-density server clusters specifically tuned for running large language models and demanding cloud workloads.
The joint initiative addresses the mounting global squeeze on data center space and power, shifting focus from raw software models to operational hardware.
ZOOM OUT - The Oxagon groundbreaking follows-on from the strategic framework HUMAIN and DataVolt signed in November 2025. That initial deal targeted a multi-gigawatt pipeline to position Saudi Arabia as a global hub for intelligent compute and lower overall compute costs. Since then, HUMAIN has aggressively stacked hardware, energy, and cloud alliances to secure compute sovereignty. Groundwork in Oxagon activates last year’s agreement, starting to building-out the concrete, low-latency backbone for international enterprise workloads.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: HUMAIN, Datavolt
Read more about the DataVolt:
HUMAIN, DataVolt to create multi-gigawatt pipeline (Middle East AI News)
NEOM & DataVolt to build $5 billion net-zero AI campus (Middle East AI News)