Saudi Energy's project arm signs a data centre memorandum with Huawei

Huawei is the counterparty to one of the three agreements Saudi Energy signed at LEAP 2026, according to Arabic coverage of the signings: a memorandum of understanding with the utility's Project Development Company covering cooperation on data centre and digital infrastructure projects. The English-language reporting of Saudi Energy's LEAP signings named two of the three counterparties — a supply arrangement between National Grid SA and HUMAIN, and a framework agreement between PDC and stc's data centre arm center3 . The third, with Huawei, appears only in Arabic. PDC is the vehicle through which the Saudi power sector develops generation and infrastructure projects, and its appearance on both the center3 and Huawei documents says something about how the Kingdom is approaching the compute build-out. Data centres for AI are, from the utility's side of the table, load: very large, very concentrated, and unusually inflexible about interruption. A gigawatt-scale AI campus is not a customer a grid operator can treat as an ordinary connection request. It has to be planned alongside generation and transmission years ahead, and the developer needs to know what it can be promised before it commits capital. That is the gap these documents sit in. A utility development company signing with equipment makers and data centre operators is doing site selection and interconnection planning in the same conversation as facility design — which is the sequence that determines whether announced megawatts turn into running racks. What the memorandum contains has not been published: no capacity, no site, no value, no timeline. Huawei's data centre business supplies power and cooling infrastructure as well as IT equipment, and either could be in scope. Nothing in the reporting says which. Huawei's position in the Saudi market is a live question and this document is part of it. The company has made its Saudi cloud classification central to its pitch this week and has signed elsewhere in the Kingdom over the same four days. Data centre infrastructure is a category where the company competes on delivered cost and lead time, both of which matter more than usual when an operator is racing to energise capacity. The scale of what Saudi Arabia is trying to power explains the urgency. The Kingdom has set out plans for more than 12 gigawatts of power for digital infrastructure and has allocated land specifically for data centres and AI projects, while private developers have committed their own capital — Al Moammar Information Systems put $1.2bn behind a target of 192MW and NHC Innovation $880m for capacity in Khuzam Digital Valley . Every one of those projects needs a connection agreement before it needs a chip. The memorandum is the weakest instrument available, and it should be read as such. The thing worth watching is whether PDC's name shows up on an actual interconnection agreement for a named site, and how long after this week that takes. TechScoop is reporting from LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.