Saudi Arabia’s data center capacity is forecast to reach 1 gigawatt by 2030, making it the fastest-growing Gulf market in a sector awash in cash and FOMO. The pipeline of announced projects is larger still — PIF’s HUMAIN alone is targeting more than 6 GW in the coming decade. Financing even half of that will require up to $32 billion in debt, more than the kingdom’s banks are likely to be willing to assemble themselves, according to a report from consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal.
“Digital infrastructure is now one of the largest single sources of new project debt in our pipeline,” Kurt Davis Jr., the report’s author, told Semafor. The pace is being driven by vast government demand, data sovereignty legislation that is keeping caches in-country, and hyperscalers increasingly looking to lease data center space rather than build in new markets. Cheap power and plentiful land further help the pitch.
Institutional money is already circling: KKR earmarked part of its massive new infrastructure fund to back more Gulf tech build-outs last week. Such bullishness comes just five months after Iranian drones struck AWS sites in the UAE and Bahrain, casting doubt at the time on the future of the sector in the region. Unlike data centers, the memories of their investors can be short.