Khazna Data Centers Enable Microsoft’s $15.2B AI Vision for the UAE

Status: Under Development / Phased Expansion   |   Location: United Arab Emirates (UAE), likely Abu Dhabi

Project Overview

This project represents a crucial component of Microsoft's $15.2 billion total strategic investment in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), specifically aimed at accelerating the country's development as a global Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation hub. The core of the effort involves a deep partnership between Microsoft and G42, a leading Abu Dhabi-based AI holding company, with the data center capacity being delivered through G42's subsidiary, Khazna Data Centers.

The most recently announced phase is a 200 MW expansion of data center capacity, expected to come online before the end of 2026. This capacity is critical for hosting Microsoft's advanced Azure sovereign cloud services in the region. The term "sovereign cloud" is key, as it signifies a cloud infrastructure that meets the highest local compliance and security standards, making it essential for government entities, public sector organizations, and heavily regulated industries.

The infrastructure is explicitly designed to be AI-ready, supporting the extremely high-density and power requirements of the latest NVIDIA GPU chips (such as the H100 and next-generation models), which Microsoft has secured an export license from the U.S. government to bring into the UAE. This high-density compute power is the engine for training and deploying large AI models. The total investment for expanding AI-driven data centers and cloud facilities is the largest part of Microsoft's commitment, with $5.5 billion earmarked for infrastructure expansion between 2026 and 2029 alone.

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