Humain and DataVolt Begin Building First 100 Megawatts of Planned 1.5 Gigawatt AI Campus at Oxagon
Saudi artificial intelligence company Humain and data centre developer DataVolt have started construction on the first 100 megawatts of a planned 1.5 gigawatt AI data centre campus at Oxagon, the industrial city component of the 500 billion dollar Neom development on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, MEED reported on 1 September 2026.
What is being built
The companies announced an expanded partnership at the Leap technology event in Riyadh to develop 100 megawatts of capacity, which forms part of a larger 360 megawatt phase at the Oxagon site. The initial 100 megawatts of capacity is expected to be available in 2028, according to MEED, while the wider campus is planned to eventually reach 1.5 gigawatts. The facility is designed to support large scale AI and cloud workloads for domestic and international customers, and is expected to integrate renewable energy and advanced cooling systems. Neom managing director and chief executive Aiman Al-Mudaifer said the ability to secure power, land and connectivity was becoming critical to the economics of AI computing capacity, pointing to Oxagon’s pre zoned industrial land, energy resources and subsea cable connectivity to Europe and Africa as underpinning the project.
Ownership and the companies involved
Humain, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is combining its capabilities across the AI stack with DataVolt’s experience developing, financing and operating digital infrastructure. Humain chief executive Tareq Amin said construction was under way and that the partners were building at the speed and scale the next era of AI demanded, while DataVolt chief executive Rajit Nanda called the groundbreaking an important milestone as the first phase moved forward. DataVolt, founded in 2023, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vision Invest, a Saudi developer focused on public private partnerships whose portfolio also includes utility developers Acwa Power and Miahona Company. Humain was launched in May 2025 to operate and invest across the AI value chain, including next generation data centres, high performance infrastructure, cloud platforms and advanced AI models such as Allam, and has since signed multibillion dollar chip supply deals with AMD and Nvidia. In October 2025 Humain agreed non binding terms under which Saudi Aramco would acquire a minority stake, with the Public Investment Fund retaining majority ownership.
A deal rooted in February 2025
The groundbreaking builds on an earlier agreement. In February 2025, Neom and DataVolt signed a deal to develop data centre infrastructure at Oxagon, with a first phase backed by an initial investment of about 5 billion dollars originally due to be operational by 2028, part of a wider campus Neom described at the time as ultimately reaching 1.5 gigawatts. Under that agreement, Oxagon leases land to DataVolt and provides infrastructure support. In September 2025, DataVolt signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s LG Electronics to supply cooling for the Oxagon facility, which is designed to operate with net zero carbon emissions.
Part of a wider Saudi AI push
The Oxagon project sits alongside other Humain infrastructure commitments. In May 2026, Humain issued a tender for infrastructure at a separate 6 gigawatt hyperscale AI campus in east Riyadh, to be delivered on an early contractor involvement basis. Saudi Arabia is targeting a role as a regional digital and AI hub under Vision 2030, an ambition that requires substantial cloud computing and power capacity.
Why it matters: The Oxagon groundbreaking is a concrete construction milestone for one of the Gulf’s largest announced AI infrastructure commitments, turning a February 2025 financing agreement into physical build out. For Saudi Arabia, it reinforces a strategy of using the Public Investment Fund’s balance sheet and Vision 2030 backed entities such as Neom to attract the power, land and cooling capacity that AI compute increasingly depends on, while positioning the kingdom alongside the UAE in the race to host hyperscale AI infrastructure for regional and international customers. The involvement of Aramco as a prospective minority investor in Humain and the parallel 6 gigawatt Riyadh campus suggest AI data centres are becoming a structural pillar of Saudi economic diversification rather than a one off project.
Outlook: Attention now turns to delivery of the first 100 megawatts in 2028 and to the timetable for the remaining 260 megawatts of the 360 megawatt first phase before the campus scales toward its planned 1.5 gigawatt capacity. On our calculation, the 100 megawatts now under construction equates to under seven percent of the eventual 1.5 gigawatt campus, and even the full 360 megawatt phase of which it is part would represent only around a quarter of Oxagon’s planned capacity, underlining how much construction lies ahead over the rest of the decade. Progress on Humain’s separate 6 gigawatt Riyadh campus, tendered in May 2026, will offer a further signal of how quickly Saudi Arabia can translate its AI infrastructure ambitions into operating capacity.
Source: MEED, Neom
