Today's Edition
KHALED AL KHAWALDEH (ABU DHABI)
The UAE is set to witness substantial growth in its data centre infrastructure, according to a recent report by ResearchAndMarkets.com.
The report highlights that the existing data centre capacity in the UAE exceeds 250 megawatts (MW), with an additional 500MW planned for the near future.
Notably, Abu Dhabi is poised to lead this expansion, accounting for approximately 40% of the upcoming capacity. This translates to nearly 150 MW of new capacity expected in Abu Dhabi by the end of 2025.
Financially, the UAE anticipates around $1.5 billion in new investments directed towards these upcoming data centres by 2027. Several major operators are highlighted as being at the forefront of this expansion, including Equinix, Khazna Data Centers, Etisalat, and Gulf Data Hub.
Data centres have become an increasingly important business operation due to the proliferation AI technologies, which require enormous amounts of computing capacity to run. The UAE is actively seeking to place itself at the forefront of the emerging AI industry, seeking to place itself as a hub for the innovation and regional deployment of models.
Mouna Essa-Egh, VP Middle East & Africa for Schneider Electrics Secure Power and Data Centre Divisions, told Aletihad late last year that they expected the market in the MENA region to grow between 17 to 20%. The company, which is one of the largest technology providers for the data centre industry, is actively working to increase the efficiency and capability of its servers to match the region.
"In the UAE, the demand is booming, both from running generative AI, large language models, but also from usage of AI," she said.
"The UAE is developing a lot of new technologies, and Abu Dhabi is one of the most advanced technological cities, and all this needs a lot of data centres to power it."
Mouna explained that the proliferation of the usage of AI, both at a consumer level for things like airport check-ins and local language models, meant that data centres had to be invested in locally, to reduce the latency and speed up the process.
The UAE's keen participation in the global AI race has seen the country take on more investments in centres both locally and abroad. In February 2025, an agreement was reached with France to develop a 1-gigawatt data centre dedicated to artificial intelligence, with investments ranging between $30-$50 billion.
Moreover, in January 2025, Hussain Sajwani, founder of DAMAC Properties, made global headlines when he announced plans to invest at least $20 billion in US data centres focused on artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
