RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is expected to become one of the world’s largest exporters of computing power within eight to 10 years, similar to its current position as one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, according to Rajit Nanda, CEO of DataVolt.
DataVolt’s bet on the Kingdom rests on three key factors: energy, connectivity, and geography, according to Gulf Business.
DataVolt, an innovative and environmentally friendly data center developer and operator headquartered in Riyadh, with offices in Dubai and California, is part of Saudi Vision Invest Group, which incubated Acwa in its early days.
The group also includes Miahona, a company listed on the Saudi stock exchange, and Saudi Tabreed, a district cooling joint venture with UAE-based Tabreed, in addition to shipping, logistics and liquefied natural gas businesses.
Nanda said the cost of generating electricity from large-scale green energy projects in Saudi Arabia is about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which he estimates is around 30 percent to 40 percent lower than comparable costs in China.
In telecommunications, the Kingdom has invested heavily in subsea cable infrastructure over the past decade. Saudi Arabia currently has 17 subsea cables landing in the country, with that number expected to rise to 24 within the next two years, alongside its terrestrial fiber network.
Nanda does not see domestic demand as the primary driver of expansion, as the nation currently has about 300 megawatts of data center capacity, a figure expected to rise to around 800 MW by 2030 or 2031.
He said the goal goes beyond meeting domestic market needs and is to transform Saudi Arabia into “computing factories for the world.”
The company is putting this vision into practice through its project in Oxagon, the industrial city within NEOM, which is targeting a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts. Nanda expects construction work to begin in about 12 weeks, with the first phase set to come online with capacity reaching hundreds of megawatts.
The third factor is one that Nanda believes the market is largely overlooking. He sees Saudi Arabia’s geographic location as a strategic advantage that has not received enough attention.
From the Kingdom, around half of the world’s population can be reached within 120 milliseconds of latency, including about 1.4 billion people in Africa, 2 billion in South and Southeast Asia, and 450 million in Europe, as well as another 350 million people who can be reached through Europe into the US.
Energy and data company
Nanda does not primarily view the firm as a data center business. Instead, he describes it as an energy company that entered the data center sector from the opposite direction.
The company’s name reflects its business model, he said, with “data” representing data and intelligence, while “volt” refers to energy.
According to Nanda, the group has developed nearly $120 billion worth of new infrastructure projects over roughly two decades across the energy, water, and green hydrogen sectors in about 15 countries.
Projects sold before completion
DataVolt currently has about 60 MW of project capacity across Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, including 48 MW at two sites in the Kingdom and 12 MW in Tashkent.
The full capacity is scheduled to be operational in phases before the end of the year, with investments of nearly $1 billion.
Although Nanda described these projects as “first steps” to test the market, demand has far exceeded expectations. He said virtually all the capacity has already been sold, with only a few megawatts remaining unsold out of the total 60 MW.
About 70 percent of DataVolt’s capacity in Saudi Arabia is allocated to AI workloads, with the remainder going to cloud computing. In Uzbekistan, usage is split roughly evenly between AI and cloud computing.
The company is among the first operators in the Gulf and Central Asia to deploy liquid cooling at scale, a technology that enables high-density computing racks required for AI model training.
Data center financing enters new phase
One of the company’s major developments has been the closing of financing for its Tashkent project through an alliance of European development finance institutions, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, France’s Proparco, Germany’s DEG and the OPEC Fund for International Development.
Nanda said financing a single data center project in this manner and at this scale is among the first such experiences globally, as financial institutions had to assess how to distribute risks associated with a digital asset, something less common than financing energy and water projects.
Round-the-clock renewable energy
DataVolt’s Tashkent data center relies on renewable energy around the clock through a combination of solar power during the day and wind power at night, coordinated with the electricity grid, according to Gulf Business.
Nanda said the company worked with the grid to develop a mechanism allowing some renewable power plants directly connected to the center to supply green electricity around the clock without adding costs to the project.
Electricity grid readiness is one of the biggest bottlenecks facing the data center industry, particularly in emerging markets. However, according to Nanda, Uzbekistan’s experience has demonstrated that flexible solutions can be developed outside traditional models.
Talent before infrastructure
DataVolt’s priorities extend beyond building data centers, with the company investing in talent development ahead of its infrastructure expansion.
Through the Energy and Water Academy, the company launched a three-year program equivalent to a university degree to train young people to become certified data center operators, with equal participation from men and women.
The firm offered 100 places in a data and AI program and expected to receive around 400 applications, but received 16,500 in just four days.
In Uzbekistan, DataVolt has committed to ensuring that all data center operators are Uzbek citizens by 2029.
Nanda considers talent a manageable constraint that can be addressed through training and investment. However, he believes access to advanced chips presents a different challenge, given the geopolitical restrictions and regulations governing trade in advanced graphics processing units.
He said Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the US, where advanced chips are produced, is currently working in the Kingdom’s favor. However, he added, the rapid pace of change in the AI sector makes its future trajectory difficult to predict.
