An African construction company is now building part of Saudi Arabia’s AI future. Hassan Allam Construction has won a contract worth about 750 million riyals ($200 million) to build the first phase of an AI data centre in Riyadh.
Major Highlights
- Hassan Allam Construction is working with India’s Sterling & Wilson on the job. The data centre is being developed by Humain, the AI company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Center3, the digital infrastructure arm of telecom operator STC Group.
- The contractors will handle civil, architectural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing work, plus site infrastructure.
- Phase one should take 16 months and deliver 16.2 megawatts of IT load. A second phase will take the facility to 50 megawatts, with halls built for the heavy power and cooling that AI chips need.
- Humain and Center3 agreed in December 2025 to build AI data centres with combined capacity of up to 1 gigawatt.
- A bigger prize is coming. Humain is taking bids for a 100-megawatt AI data centre in Riyadh worth about $1 billion. Bids are due on 8 November, and work is set to start in January 2027.
- Hassan Allam Holding was founded in Egypt in 1936 and is still family-owned. It employs over 50,000 people in 10 countries, made $2.1 billion in revenue in 2025 and ended the year with a backlog above $7.2 billion. Saudi Arabia is its biggest market outside Egypt.
This first phase could be the foot in the door. If Hassan Allam also bids for the $1 billion project, we will know how far its AI infrastructure ambitions go.
Kini Big Deal
AI is not only about models and apps. Somebody has to pour the concrete, wire the halls and cool the racks, and the Gulf is spending big to become an AI computing hub. An Egyptian family firm is now part of that build-out, which shows African companies can earn from the AI boom on the infrastructure side, not just as customers. It also shows where the money is flowing: huge, power-hungry data centres.
