Why Saudi Arabia ranks second globally for data center attractiveness

Published: 2026-06-17T11:53:32.000Z

Saudi Arabia's bet that data centres would become as strategically important as oil refineries is starting to look prescient. The kingdom now leads the Arab world in operational data centre capacity and ranks second globally, after the US, among the most attractive markets for new data centre investment.

Saudi Arabia's bet that data centers would become as strategically important as oil refineries is starting to look prescient. The kingdom now leads the Arab world in operational data center capacity and ranks second globally, after the United States, among the most attractive markets for new data center investment, according to a Bloomberg analysis. That is a remarkable position for a country whose digital infrastructure was a modest footnote just five years ago, and it reflects how aggressively Vision 2030 has been used to redraw the kingdom's role in the global technology stack. The numbers behind the claim are genuinely striking. Saudi Arabia's operational data center capacity has expanded sixfold since Vision 2030 was launched, climbing from 68 megawatts in 2021 to 440 megawatts in 2025, and reaching 467 megawatts in the first quarter of 2026. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has reported total investment exceeding SAR 16 billion, or about $4.26 billion, with more than 60 operational data centers now developed by over 20 different companies. The market is projected to grow from $2.08 billion in 2025 to $6.16 billion by 2031, with the kingdom aiming for 1.8 gigawatts of capacity by 2030 and significantly larger AI compute capacity in parallel. Two ingredients explain why Saudi Arabia rates so highly on global attractiveness measures. Power availability and land enablement together account for 58 percent of what makes a data center market attractive, and the kingdom delivers strongly on both. Cheap, abundant energy from a mix of oil, gas and rapidly scaling solar power gives operators a structural cost advantage, while vast tracts of available land allow hyperscale builds that would be politically or physically impossible elsewhere. Add cool climate optimization through evolving cooling technologies and you have the basic chemistry of a market global hyper-scalers want to enter. Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Alibaba have all committed regional capacity, with AWS alone investing more than $5.3 billion in a new region scheduled to open in 2026. The flagship project tells the story most clearly. The Hexagon Data Centre, classified as Tier IV, is being built as the world's largest government data center at $2.7 billion, and it sits at the heart of the kingdom's drive to secure technical sovereignty over its national data. Sitting alongside it are projects like ICS Arabia's $1.9 billion Desert Dragon facility, telecom led platforms from STC and Tawal, and the PIF backed HUMAIN venture aimed at putting Saudi Arabia in the top three nations globally for AI infrastructure. Saudi Aramco has also committed to building its own large scale data center to support digital operations. The regional read is straightforward. Across the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are committing over $100 billion combined to build next generation data centers, with the UAE projected as the region's fastest growing market under its 2031 AI strategy. For the rest of the Arab world, the takeaway is uncomfortable but clear, namely that the center of gravity for digital infrastructure has decisively shifted to the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia carrying the lead.