Expansion of Huwmain data center lifts Al-Muammar contracts to 8.76 billion riyals and reshapes local infrastructure returns

The AI data-center boom in Saudi Arabia has shifted from mere announcements about linking compute to unprecedented financial flows into the budgets of national companies, after Huwmain, backed by the Public Investment Fund, expanded its contract with Al-Muammar Information Systems (MIS). The latest expansion raised the AI data-center capacity from 50 megawatts to 250 megawatts, pushing the total contract value to over 8.76 billion riyals, roughly $2.34 billion.

A single contract with a sovereign client now accounts for 689 % of the company’s total revenue for 2025.This financial shift has lifted the shares of the company listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) by 87 % since the start of the year, reaching record levels in late August 2026. The rapid rise has increased the combined wealth of founders Ibrahim Al-Muammar and Khalid Al-Muammar, who own just over half of the company, to about $1.4 billion, after four decades spent providing contracting services and traditional IT solutions since its founding in 1979.

The agreement’s timeline shows an accelerating construction pace, as the parties signed the original contract in March 2025 for 50 megawatts, its value then exceeding 155 % of the company’s total 2024 revenue. On 27 August 2026, the company received an award letter adding 200 megawatts. Management confirmed that the additional project will be implemented in scheduled phases, without affecting the first-phase timeline, with the company taking on engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) and operation duties, giving it the role of builder and operator rather than merely a property owner or commercial intermediary.

The rising financial gamble places local contractors before a duality of expansion and concentration risk.While Huwmain’s plans rely on broad computing partnerships with AMD, Cisco, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, the conversion of a single project to roughly seven times the previous year’s revenue ties the company’s near-term future to the spending rate of one major client. The company manages these risks through its existing customer base, which includes the Kingdom’s largest entities, foremost Saudi Aramco, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Al Rajhi Bank, alongside several government agencies.

Across regional and Gulf markets, the deal reflects the shift of sovereign AI’s economic value from foreign vendors and international consulting firms to local industrial supply chains and contractors. This shift obliges infrastructure and technology leaders in Gulf institutions to rethink pricing and contracting models for data centres, as ultra-high-performance computing is no longer the exclusive domain of global firms but has become an opportunity for regional construction and engineering companies that gain direct operational expertise in the advanced power- and cooling-requirements of AI systems.