Qatar-based telco Ooredoo Group announced on Thursday that US information management services company Iron Mountain has agreed to take a minority equity stake in Ooredoo’s carrier-neutral data centre company, MENA Digital Hub.
Under the deal, Iron Mountain will partner with MENA Digital Hub to provide specialised advice in the design, construction and daily operations of data centres to meet evolving global demand.
Iron Mountain operates around 415MW of colocation, hyperscale and AI-related capacity in 21 markets across three continents, with total potential capacity of nearly 1.3GW.
Ooredoo said Iron Mountain’s involvement will initially focus on operational support, infrastructure enhancement and supporting MENA Digital Hub’s existing plans to further expand its data centre capacity across key markets in the MENA region.
“This partnership will provide the strategic support needed to optimise operations, accelerate infrastructure development, and scale our platform to meet the growing demand of blue-chip customers and major organisations across the region,” said Ooredoo group CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo in a statement.
Ooredoo created MENA Digital Hub last year by carving out its existing data centre assets from its telecom operations to meet increasing demand for localised cloud services and IT workloads, particularly from hyperscalers. In September 2024, the group secured a QAR 2 billion (US$549.4 million) financing deal with QNB, Doha Bank, and Masraf Al Rayan to finance the plan.
Ooredoo – which currently operates data centres in five markets – plans to invest US$1 billion to expand its data centre capacity to over 120MW in the medium term.
No details were disclosed on the value or size of Iron Mountain’s equity stake in MENA Digital Hub, which remains subject to the usual closing procedures.
