War has not halted the Gulf’s data-centre boom
The article says Gulf data-centre construction continued after Iranian drones targeted Amazon facilities in the UAE and Bahrain. Stargate UAE’s first 200MW phase is nearly complete within a planned 5GW Abu Dhabi campus, while PwC expects regional capacity to reach about 4GW after quadrupling in five years. Investors are attracted by relatively cheap electricity and land, AI-worker inflows, sovereign capital and government policies that require local or sovereign cloud capacity. AWS, Microsoft and several Saudi and Emirati firms are expanding their regional commitments, and MGX raised $50bn for AI investment. The conflict has increased security concerns, with proposals for underground or embassy-like facilities, but the article reports that construction and investment continue.
Why it matters
This is relevant to Dealroom’s AI-infrastructure and startup-ecosystem mapping in the Gulf, including sovereign funds, hyperscalers, data-centre developers and local AI firms. The cost, capacity, talent and data-sovereignty signals help identify where AI compute and enterprise demand may cluster outside Europe while creating potential cross-border investment links.
