The kingdom’s Leap 2025 tech show has already seen $14.9bn of commitments in AI and cloud infrastructure
While eyes focus on who signed what pledge at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Saudi Arabia’s annual global tech event Leap 2025 revealed $14.9 billion of investment deals and infrastructure partnerships by domestic and international players. The latest with data centre giant Equinix which pledged $1 billion to build a 100MW AI-focused data centre for both hyperscale and retail customers.
Equinix has been very vocal about overcoming the well documented Egyptian bottleneck through the Red Sea. In a recent blog post, senior manager of peering and interconnection EMEA Martin Atkinson makes the case for the Arabian Peninsula to become a new digital hub in the mould of Singapore, where Equinix operates five carrier-neutral Equinix IBX colocation data centres, with a sixth slated to open in 2027. Equinix also hosts 10 internet exchanges, including Equinix Singapore Internet Exchange. Of the 40 subsea cable systems that land in Singapore, 19 of them either terminate directly in or extend to an Equinix colocation facility.
On the Arabian Peninsula, Atkinson said: “There are 34 subsea cable systems landing at 18 CLSs (often at multiple CLSs, serving multiple nations). There will be between four and eight new subsea cable systems ready for service in the next several years. The landings for these new cables will need to break the historic model of regeneration and subsea pass-through to meet international demand for diversity from the Red Sea.”
He added: “This is a pivotal opportunity for cities such as Salalah, Muscat, Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah, Duba and Neom to become key markets on a new Arabian Peninsula digital super-highway.” Beyond Saudi Arabia, Equinix operates six carrier-neutral data centers across the GCC region, four in the UAE and two in Oman, and hosts five internet exchanges, including Equinix Muscat Internet Exchange.
DataVolt goes bigger
Local data centre builder and operator DataVolt took an even bigger leap at Leap, signing a $5bn deal to develop a 1.5GW data centre campus in the kingdom’s new-city Neom’s Oxagon industrial area. This campus, with phase one expected to be operational by 2028, will initially comprise 300MW.
As part of the agreement, Oxagon will lease DataVolt the land for the development of the facility and provide the sustainable data center operator with infrastructure support. The ambition is for the facility to be entirely powered by renewable energy, providing a fully integrated, end-to-end data center solution. The project will utilise advanced cooling technologies and is designed to operate at net zero.
DataVolt said Oxagon’s strategic location on the Red Sea coast, combined with access to sub-sea cables providing fibre connectivity, alongside cost-competitive renewable energy, green hydrogen, and a rapidly expanding industrial ecosystem, makes it the “ideal location for DataVolt to develop a large-scale green AI factory”.
Splash the cash
Other new investments in the kingdom included an announcement between Groq and Aramco Digital confirming a $1.5bn plan to expand AI-powered inference infrastructure and cloud computing; ALAT and Lenovo committing $2bn to establish an advanced manufacturing and technology centre integrating AI and robotics; Google introducing new AI-driven digital infrastructure and the launch of a computing cluster to meet regional and global demand; Qualcomm confirming the availability of its ALLAM language model on Qualcomm AI Cloud; and Alibaba Cloud launching the AI Enablement Programme comprising collaborations with Tuwaiq Academy and STC Academy to train national talent.
Databricks announced plans to invest $300 million in integrated PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions to give application developers cutting-edge AI tools; SambaNova committed $140m to build advanced AI infrastructure; KKR, in partnership with Gulf Data Hub, revealed a strategic investment to develop data centres with a total capacity of up to 300MW; Saudi Arabia’s Salesforce invested US 500 million to develop Hyperforce and enhance cloud capabilities for regional customers; and Tencent Cloud allocated $150 million to establish the Middle East’s first AI-powered cloud region.
The spending continued as Microsoft announced it will open a data centre academy in the kingdom, in partnership with the Dammam-based National Information Technology Academy. A bunch of VC investors including the likes of STV, Rua Ventures, Beco Capital and Waed Capital committed $497m to tech startups while Huawei showcased its Future Skills Centre, which has a goal of training 25,000 individuals in areas such as AI, the cloud and big data over the next five years.
Oh, and that $14.9bn commitment mentioned at the start was just Sunday’s monetary commitment.