Saudi Arabia breaks ground on 480 MW Hexagon government data centre in Riyadh

Saudi Arabia breaks ground on 480 MW Hexagon government data centre in Riyadh is profiled by BTW Media because published evidence links it to internet infrastructure, governance, operational dependencies, or market visibility.

• The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority has laid the foundation for Hexagon, a 480 megawatt government data centre expected to be among the largest of its kind
• Analysts note the project reflects broader trends in sovereign digital infrastructure, but questions remain about cost, strategy and the focus on national versus regional benefits

What happened: Riyadh site marks start of 480 MW government data centre build

Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) has formally begun work on its Hexagon government data centre in Riyadh, marking a major push into large-scale digital infrastructure. The foundation stone was laid in a ceremony that included senior officials from multiple government agencies, signalling the commencement of construction on a facility that will occupy around 30 million square feet and support a planned electrical capacity of 480 megawatts, making it one of the world’s largest government-owned data centres by power size. 

The Hexagon project is designed to meet Tier IV data centre standards, the highest global benchmark for reliability under the Uptime Institute’s framework, indicating fault tolerance and redundancy for mission-critical systems. It has also secured a range of international certifications related to engineering, resilience and energy efficiency, including TIA 942 and ISO/IEC 22237, and is targeting LEED Gold standards for sustainability. 

Construction cost estimates for projects of this scale typically run into the billions of dollars. Local media have cited figures of around US$2.7 billion for Hexagon, a substantial investment even by the standards of the rapidly expanding Middle East data centre market. 

Hexagon fits within a broader expansion of digital infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has seen multiple initiatives aimed at bolstering its technology landscape, from land leases for private data centres at Riyadh’s First Technology Park to multi-gigawatt AI campus plans by developers such as DataVolt.

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Why it’s important

The Hexagon data centre represents a major milestone in Saudi Arabia’s long-term Vision 2030 strategy, which aims to diversify the economy beyond oil and position the country as a regional hub for data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. Robust digital infrastructure is widely seen as foundational to these goals, with secure, sovereign capacity enabling not only more resilient government services but also a platform for technological innovation and foreign investment. 

However, the scale and focus of the investment raise questions about balance between national capability and regional or private sector engagement. Data centre construction is capital-intensive, and some industry observers caution that concentrating such large capacity within government-owned facilities could crowd out smaller operators or distort local markets unless carefully integrated with wider cloud and telecommunications ecosystems.

There is also ongoing debate in technical and policy circles about the trade-offs between sovereign data assets and broader openness. While having critical government systems hosted domestically under strict certifications may enhance perceived security, it does not inherently guarantee better interoperability, cost efficiency or innovation compared with hybrid public–private models increasingly used elsewhere.