NHC Innovation plans $800 million Khuzam Digital Valley

An $800 million digital valley project NHC Innovation detailed an $800 million project called Khuzam Digital Valley, with a path to roughly 65 megawatts of potential capacity by 2033, according to my.gov.sa's official summary of LEAP 2026's announcements . The long runway to 2033 distinguishes this project from more near-term infrastructure announcements made around the same event, such as the AWS and Microsoft cloud regions due to launch in late 2026, positioning it as a longer-horizon build rather than a facility expected to be substantially complete within the next year or two. What a "digital valley" framing signals Branding a project as a digital valley, rather than simply a data centre, suggests NHC Innovation is planning something broader than a single facility — likely a dedicated zone or campus bringing together data-centre capacity alongside other digital-infrastructure or technology-sector uses. That kind of clustered development approach has become increasingly common for large-scale digital infrastructure projects globally, since concentrating power, connectivity and cooling infrastructure in one planned zone can be more efficient than building isolated facilities scattered across separate sites, and it can also make it easier to attract multiple tenants and complementary businesses to the same location over time. The materials TechScoop reviewed did not list the project's intended tenants or phases. A longer timeline than some of its peers The 2033 timeline attached to Khuzam Digital Valley's roughly 65-megawatt potential capacity puts it on a longer development horizon than the AWS and Microsoft cloud regions due in late 2026, and later than the 2028 target attached to the AWS-HUMAIN AI zone. It sits alongside MIS's $1.2 billion plan targeting 192 megawatts, which TechScoop covered in its piece on the MIS expansion , although no completion date for that plan was given in the materials TechScoop reviewed. The contrast is a useful reminder that not every data-centre announcement from the same event is operating on the same clock, and a runway to 2033 leaves room to phase a build-out over time rather than delivering all of its capacity at once. Part of a broader wave of Saudi digital infrastructure NHC Innovation's project is one of several announced around LEAP 2026 aimed at expanding Saudi Arabia's underlying digital infrastructure base, alongside cloud regions from AWS and Microsoft and additional data-centre capacity from MIS. Read together, these projects describe a country building out digital infrastructure across multiple operators, multiple timelines and multiple capacity scales simultaneously, rather than concentrating the entire build-out in a single flagship project. Why the longer timeline matters for planning purposes A project planned around a 2033 horizon gives NHC Innovation more room to adjust scope, technology choices and capacity targets as demand and technology both evolve over the coming years — a meaningful advantage in a fast-moving category like AI infrastructure, where the hardware and cooling requirements of 2033 may look quite different from those of today. TechScoop connects that evolving demand picture, including the power and cooling requirements behind it, in a broader piece on how Saudi Arabia's AI boom is becoming an electricity and cooling story . Why megawatts, not square footage, define this project As with most data-centre announcements tied to LEAP 2026, the headline figure attached to Khuzam Digital Valley is expressed in megawatts of potential capacity rather than square footage or server count, in line with standard practice for the sector. Power availability, not physical floor space, is typically the binding constraint on how much compute a facility can ultimately run, particularly for the dense, power-hungry hardware used in modern AI training and inference. A roughly 65-megawatt target gives operators, tenants and government planners a far more useful basis for comparison against other projects — including MIS's 192-megawatt plan and the AWS-HUMAIN AI zone's 50-megawatt target — than a square-footage figure would. Adding it to Saudi Arabia's running capacity tally Khuzam Digital Valley is one of several individual capacity commitments TechScoop has been tracking as part of a broader effort to total up how much AI-relevant data-centre capacity Saudi Arabia is actually assembling across different operators and timelines, a compiled picture available in TechScoop's look at how much AI data-centre capacity Saudi Arabia is actually building . Read alongside that fuller tally, NHC Innovation's roughly 65 megawatts represents a meaningful, if longer-horizon, addition to a capacity build-out spread across multiple operators rather than concentrated in a single flagship project. Sources my.gov.sa (National Platform)