Humain & AirTrunk Riyadh | High-Performance Hyperscale Cloud & AI Facility

Status: Pre-development/Planning Phase   |   Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Project Overview

The Riyadh Data Center Campus, a landmark project born from the strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia’s AI venture Humain (a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, PIF) and global hyperscale operator AirTrunk, signifies the Kingdom’s aggressive pursuit of digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominance in the Middle East. With an initial investment phase valued at approximately US$3 Billion, this campus is not just a commercial venture but a critical piece of national infrastructure designed to underpin the transformative goals of Saudi Vision 2030.

The core mission of the campus is to provide the massive, high-density computing capacity necessary to host both global Hyperscalers (like AWS, Microsoft, and Google) and the Kingdom’s own sovereign AI initiatives. The scale of the project is unprecedented in the region, forming a vital part of Humain's national plan to deliver an extraordinary 6.6 GW of total data center capacity over the next decade.

The technical design will prioritize AI-readiness, necessitating the inclusion of advanced Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling infrastructure. This capability is essential for efficiently managing the extreme power and heat generated by dense clusters of high-end GPUs (e.g., from NVIDIA and AMD), which are the backbone of large language models and other AI applications. Given Riyadh’s challenging desert climate, the cooling architecture will be a sophisticated hybrid system designed to achieve the lowest possible PUE, targeting 1.4 or below, balancing high-reliability with environmental efficiency.

Riyadh was chosen as the primary site due to its status as the nation’s political and financial center, ensuring robust connectivity, secure power access from the national grid, and proximity to massive demand from government and large enterprises. By combining the local market access and capital strength of PIF/Humain with the global hyperscale expertise of AirTrunk, this project is poised to rapidly accelerate Saudi Arabia's ability to localize cloud services, comply with data sovereignty regulations, and establish itself as a true digital hub connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa

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