The AI data centre race across the Gulf and India is moving from headline gigawatts to the slower work of paying for power connections, finding paying tenants and getting equipment delivered. Announcements made between 8 and 14 November show that the capacity being built today is measured in tens of megawatts, while the plans are measured in gigawatts, and the money is increasingly going into the grid before it goes into chips.
That gap matters for any business in the region that expects to rent local AI computing in the next two years. The figures below come from company statements and official announcements, as reported this month.
Saudi Arabia is financing the grid before the GPUs
The clearest example came from Riyadh. HUMAIN, the AI company backed by the Public Investment Fund, signed two financing agreements worth up to SAR 2.5bn ($667m) with the National Infrastructure Fund (Infra) on 8 November, Arabian Business reported. Arab News, citing the Saudi Press Agency, said they are the first deals under Infra’s AI data centre financing programme.
The split is telling. Up to SAR 1.1bn ($293.3m) is for buying and deploying graphics processing units (GPUs), equal to about 25MW of IT load. The larger facility, up to SAR 1.4bn ($373.3m), pays for substations, transmission lines and grid connections designed to support up to 1GW of future IT capacity, according to the same reports.
In other words, more of the money is going into power infrastructure than into computers, and the power side is sized for a load about 40 times larger than the GPUs being funded now. Arab News reported that HUMAIN plans 3GW of AI data centre capacity by 2030, and that the deals build on a non-binding framework announced at Davos in January for up to $1.2bn of financing covering up to 250MW.
HUMAIN is also preparing the software layer. Its chief executive, Tareq Amin, said the company’s full AI stack will be available on 15 December, including a 3 trillion parameter open-weight model, Arab News reported from a HUMAIN event in Riyadh.
Hyperscalers are adding capacity alongside the national champion. Microsoft said in August that its Saudi Arabia East cloud region, in the Eastern Province with three availability zones, would be available to customers in November 2026.
Megawatts under construction, gigawatts on paper
Elsewhere, the projects that are physically starting are much smaller than the plans that dominate the headlines.
In Qatar, Syntys, a data centre operator backed by Ooredoo, broke ground on a 20MW facility on 12 November, TradeArabia reported. The site sits on an existing Syntys campus that already has power, fibre and an operations team. The company now has four campuses in Qatar, including two it bought earlier in 2026 from QData QFZ. No completion date was given.
In India, STTGDC India opened a 22MW facility, NOI2, in Noida on 12 November, according to a company statement carried by The Tribune. The company said it has about 200MW planned across Delhi NCR and more than 613MW of critical IT load across 34 data centres in 10 cities, a figure that includes projects still under development.
Set against those, the plans announced the same week are an order of magnitude larger. ReNew said on 12 November it would invest about ₹67,000 crore (₹670bn) in a 1GW green hyperscale data centre at Anakapalli in Andhra Pradesh, part of a wider package of about ₹80,000 crore, SolarQuarter reported. The reports give no construction timeline for the data centre.
In Oman, a consortium led by Mubbadrah Investment plans a 400MW AI campus with an initial investment of $3bn, Tbreak reported. The site, construction timeline and financing structure have not been published.
Costs and equipment are the new constraint
The most direct warning about delivery came from a developer. Hussain Sajwani, founder and chairman of DAMAC Group, told Bloomberg Invest Dubai on 12 November that development costs have risen by about 30% and could climb another 20% to 30%, TradeArabia reported.
He described supply-chain disruption and repeated equipment delays as the industry’s biggest challenge, beyond cost alone, according to the same report. DAMAC still aims to lift its planned global capacity to 10GW by the end of 2027, from about 6GW now, and said about $9bn of its $20bn US programme has been invested, with progress depending on land and power.
DAMAC’s pipeline is mostly outside the region, with about 1GW in the US, 2.5GW in Europe and 2.5GW in Asia, according to TradeArabia. But its experience points the same way as Infra’s financing: land, power and equipment, rather than announcements, set the pace of building.
Tenants turn capacity into a business
A data centre earns money only when someone rents it. The week’s announcements differ sharply on this point.
STTGDC said NOI2 had been selected to host the AI compute infrastructure expansion of Neysa, so the Noida capacity has a named customer from the start. In Oman, by contrast, the US AI cloud firm Crusoe has signalled interest as a potential customer, but no binding agreement exists, according to Tbreak, which reported that the consortium expects to sign a confirmation of interest within weeks.
In Saudi Arabia, HUMAIN is both developer and main user of its capacity, and Microsoft said in August that it is working with HUMAIN on locally relevant AI solutions. That model reduces the risk of empty halls but concentrates demand in one state-backed company.
What to watch
- HUMAIN’s planned launch of its full AI stack and 3 trillion parameter model on 15 December, and whether it publishes the capacity behind it.
- Whether Microsoft’s Saudi Arabia East region opens to customers before the end of November, as the company said in August.
- Whether the Mubbadrah consortium signs the expected confirmation of interest with Crusoe, and whether ReNew sets out a construction timeline for its Anakapalli data centre.
