AirTrunk, a data centre company owned by Blackstone and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, has formed a partnership with Public Investment Fund (PIF)-owned artificial intelligence (AI) company Humain to build data centres in Saudi Arabia.
The parties aim to develop a long-term strategic partnership focused on financing, developing, and operating data centres and AI infrastructure across Saudi Arabia, with the initial campus costing US$3bn (€2.6bn).
Through this partnership, Humain will lead national efforts to deliver large-scale, AI-ready infrastructure, while Blackstone and AirTrunk, will lead development and investment capacity, the companies said.
The partners will share responsibility for designing, constructing and operating the data centres. They will also align on financing and on their strategy to attract major clients.
Tareq Amin, CEO of Humain, said: “Together with AirTrunk and Blackstone, Humain is strengthening the technological infrastructure that underpins the Kingdom’s digital economy.“
Robin Khuda, founder and CEO at AirTrunk said: “We’re bringing together the whole digital ecosystem, combining Humain’s end-to-end AI capabilities, from infrastructure to models, with AirTrunk’s leading hyperscale data centre capabilities.
“This announcement strengthens the AirTrunk data centre platform as we deliver world-class digital infrastructure for the cloud and AI across the Asia Pacific and now the Middle East, which is one of the fastest growing regions in the world.”
Stephen A Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder, Blackstone, said the AI revolution continued to be one of Blackstone’s highest conviction themes. And as the largest provider of data centres globally and a significant investor in related services and infrastructure, Blackstone brought scale and expertise across the ecosystem.
“This initiative reinforces Blackstone’s position as one of the world’s leading investors in digital infrastructure and marks a commitment to deepening our presence in the Middle East,” he said.
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