Saudi state-backed AI venture Humain and developer DataVolt have started construction of a hyperscale data center at Oxagon, Neom’s new industrial district on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.

During the Leap 2026 conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the companies announced an expanded partnership to develop 100MW of the 360MW of capacity in the first phase of the project, expected to be operational in 2028.

The completed Oxagon campus is targeting a total capacity of 1.5GW.

Oxagon is a floating hexagonal industrial district located in the southwest of Neom, a megaproject city being built in the Tabuk Province and launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017.

Oxagon will lease the land to DataVolt for the development of the facility and provide the operator with infrastructure support. The site will reportedly be powered by Neom’s wind and solar assets.

Rajit Nanda, CEO of DataVolt, called the breaking ground at Oxagon “an important milestone” as the company progresses with the first 360MW phase of the project.

“Our partnership with Humain brings together complementary capabilities with a clear focus on delivery and bringing world-class digital infrastructure capacity to the Kingdom,” Nanda said.

Tariq Amin, CEO of Humain, said: “AI ambition only matters when you can turn it into infrastructure, compute and capacity that customers can use, that is what this partnership with DataVolt is about.

“Construction is underway, 100MW is moving forward, and we are building with the speed and scale that the next era of AI demands.”

Meanwhile, DataVolt also announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Saudi telecommunications firm Zain KSA to develop an unspecified number of data centers across the Kingdom.

The collaboration will develop scalable capacity to meet Zain KSA’s future requirements and provide additional capacity for government entities, businesses, large enterprises, cloud service providers, digital content companies and digital platforms.

It will also deliver the computing power required to run and process advanced AI applications.

DataVolt said that the planned data centers will feature infrastructure capable of supporting high-density computing, advanced cooling systems and high-capacity connectivity.

Zain KSA’s CEO, Saad bin Abdulrahman AlSadhan, said that developing data centers is a “strategic step” for the company to support Saudi Arabia’s digital infrastructure.

The MoU aims to support Saudi Vision 2030, an ambitious modernisation initiative launched in 2016 to diversify the economy away from oil dependence and establish the Kingdom as a technology hub.

Learn more about the data center market in Saudi Arabia and meet with other executives and experts in the region at the DCN Riyadh event next year.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/humain-breaks-ground-on-neoms-oxagon-data-center/