Work begins on massive government data centre for Saudi Arabia

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Data Centres & Networks; 05 January 2026; 14792 views

Ground has been broken on a new data centre for the Saudi Arabian government in Riyadh, described as the world’s largest government data centre.

The foundation stone of the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority's (SDAIA) Hexagon data centre was laid late last week. The certified Tier IV design data centre will ultimately occupy 2.78 million square metres and have a power capacity of 480MW.

According to the Data Centre Dynamics website, its design will involve two concentric hexagons with a court in the middle of the facility.

The data centre will certainly have a lot to do as it will be hosting more than 290 government systems. It has also reportedly been designed to meet green building requirements, though no further information is at the moment available on this or the timetable for its building and launch.

The SDAIA president Abdullah bin Sharaf Al-Ghamdi has apparently highlighted the new facility’s role in making Saudi Arabia a global centre for data, ensuring data sovereignty and security, and enabling innovation and a digital economy. He has also promised that there will be more centres to come.

SDAIA was funded in 2018. Its transformation strategy was approved in 2019. It is described as the competent authority in the Kingdom concerned with data and AI including big data.

The new facility certainly appears to be part of a growing trend. As we noted in these pages only a few weeks ago, Saudi Arabian service provider stc group has formed a strategic joint venture partnership with Humain, a Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF)-owned AI company, to build AI data centres in the country.