Datavolt to Invest $5 Billion to Develop Data Centres in Saudi Arabia

Datavolt, a Riyadh-based company specialised in developing and operating data centres, will invest $5 billion in Saudi Arabia to develop data centres in the Kingdom, which will be the first of their kind, Datavolt CEO Rajit Nanda said.

The decision was taken at the just-concluded four-day LEAP 2024 Conference which was held in Riyadh to attract investments in the field of technology.

In an interview with Arabic news channel CNN Al-Eqtisadiah, Nanda said that these centres will generate returns on investments in the coming years and will create 2,000 job opportunities during the construction phase, in addition to 2,000 job opportunities for workers in the digital infrastructure sector, which will also support the graduation of Saudi professionals specialised in the digital sector to work in the data field in the country.

“One of the advantages that these centres will provide is foreign direct investment, as many foreign investors prefer to place their investments in data centres,” he said.

As for Saudi Arabia’s readiness to be a technology centre, Nanda said that the Kingdom is one of the best countries in the world at p[resent that can be a new global hub for artificial intelligence, which falls within the context of data centres, and depends to a large extent on energy, which is what Saudi Arabia can provide.

Traditional data centres of the past compared to those centered around the need for artificial intelligence require 60 to 100 times more energy, and no other country in the world has this abundance of resources.

“Saudi Arabia’s vision of leadership in the field of green energy generation qualifies it to receive the ‘next generation’ of data centres,” he added.

Next Generation Data Centres

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centres contribute about 2.7% of the world’s total electricity consumption. According to Nanda, almost all data centres have a very strong carbon footprint.

“The new generation of data centres are those that will be built with a sustainable solution. What we want to do is we want to build them so that they run 24 hours a day on green energy,” he said.

In order to do this, Datavolt will integrate solutions between solar energy, wind energy, batteries and green hydrogen, making these centres the first data centres in the world to integrate green hydrogen solutions and blue hydrogen solutions into the energy requirements to operate the centres and become zero emissions as the first of its kind, he added.