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Saudi Arabia has announced the opening of what it claims is the “world’s largest government data centre”.
The data centre, which will be known as the Hexagon, is located in the country’s capital Riyadh, offering 480 megawatts of capacity and covering 30 million square feet of floor space.
The Hexagon has been designed to meet the US Green Building Council’s LEED Gold standards for energy efficiency and sustainability. It uses renewable power, according to the country’s state news agency, as well as direct liquid and hybrid cooling systems, to reduce its energy footprint.
The Hexagon will be a Tier IV facility, offering the highest level of redundancy and resilience, with guaranteed uptime of 99.995%.
The Hexagon will be the first in a series of datacentres in the country, as part of an expansion plan laid out by the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), as the country seeks to diversify its economy away from its primary earner, oil. The state news agency said the data centres will contribute 10 billion Saudi riyals (around $2 billion) to the kingdom’s economy, as well as generating savings of 1.8 billion Saudi riyals a year. It did not break down how these savings will be generated.
According to analysts Research and Markets, the Saudi Arabian data centre market is expected to grow from $1.33 billion in 2024 to $3.9 billion by 2040. This is accelerated by investments from tech giants such as Google, Oracle and AWS, but also the country’s drive for digital transformation and increasing uptake of artificial intelligence and cloud services.
Research firm S&P Global, meanwhile, predicts a similar boom in the country’s data centre capacity. It projects the megawattage of Saudi data centres will grow at a compound annual rate of 29% from 2024 through to 2030. Data centres typically require significant power and water to operate.
While the oil-rich kingdom has no shortage of the former, its data centre ambitions may struggle more with the latter. “While the country’s primary water needs stem from population and economic growth, data centres add significant additional demand pressures to already strained resources,” said S&P Global.
“The country’s data centres reportedly required 15 billion litres of water in 2024 and could face water scarcity threats due to aridity, excessive use of costly desalinated water, and cooling demands in the hot climate.”
