Construction begins on Oxagon data centre as HeuMain and DataVolt put 100 megawatts of Neom computing on track for 2028

Construction has begun on the first phase of the artificial-intelligence and cloud-computing data centre within the Oxagon industrial zone of the Neom project, through a strategic partnership that brings together HeuMain (the AI-focused arm owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund) and DataVolt. The step aims to have the first phase operating at 100 megawatts by 2028, as part of an integrated computing complex whose total targeted capacity is 360 megawatts in north-west Saudi Arabia.

The new Oxagon facility relies on direct integration with renewable-energy sources and on deploying new cooling technologies together with high-performance compute clusters to meet the massive workload demands of advanced models and the cloud. HeuMain’s chief executive, Tarek Amin, said construction is already under way to deliver the 100-megawatt capacity at the speed and scale required to keep pace with the new era of artificial intelligence. The project’s operational viability rests on the readiness of Oxagon’s industrial land, the availability of power, and direct connection to a subsea cable network that provides low-latency computing services between the region, Europe and Africa.

Laying the foundations in Neom reflects HeuMain’s strategy, which was established in May 2025 and is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and aims to build a national infrastructure that includes next-generation data centres, cloud platforms and large-scale Arabic language models.The construction move coincides with the company expanding its technical partnerships with chip-industry giants such as Qualcomm (the US semiconductor firm), which has deepened its cooperation with HeuMain in data-centre infrastructure and local engineering, alongside the development of the Horizon Ultra computer, which took more than a year to develop and has been offered to enterprise customers.

At the regional level for those operating in Gulf and Middle-East markets, moving 360 megawatts from planning to actual construction sites shifts data-sovereignty from a theoretical framework to concrete computing capacity. This expansion gives regional enterprises and tech firms a local path for hosting and inferring large models without having to route data through distant servers outside the region, taking advantage of the convergence of clean-energy lines with international subsea cable routes.

This infrastructure shift requires engineers and tech leaders in the region to begin early adapting their software systems and workloads to local cloud platforms and data centres.With these computing capacities coming online in 2028, the cost-of-operation and latency equation for AI developers in the region will change, making the localisation of cloud services and business models a direct and technically and economically viable operational option.