Blackstone, Saudi AI Firm Ink $3B Data Center Pact

Blackstone is deepening its data center play, this time in Saudi Arabia.

The private equity giant is teaming up with Humain, the kingdom’s state-backed artificial intelligence company, on a $3 billion push to build data centers across the Gulf nation, Bloomberg reported. The project will be developed through AirTrunk, the Asia-Pacific operator Blackstone and Canada’s pension fund took private for $16 billion last year.

The venture is part of Saudi Arabia’s increasing push to become a global hub for AI infrastructure and could later bring in other U.S. investment heavyweights, including BlackRock, KKR and DigitalBridge, according to Humain chief executive officer Tareq Amin.

Details on where the initial Saudi sites will be built remain under wraps, as do specifics on power and chips. The Trump administration recently greenlit exports of advanced Nvidia and AMD processors to Gulf partners, though it’s unclear if those will be used in the project.

Unveiled during Riyadh’s Future Investment Initiative, the deal is the clearest sign yet of the kingdom’s pivot from oil to AI, as well as Wall Street’s eagerness to cash in. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman called AI and data centers among the most interesting investment frontiers, though he warned of looming power constraints.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund launched Humain in May and quickly positioned it as the centerpiece of the country’s digital diversification.

The firm is racing to build nearly two gigawatts of capacity by 2030 and recently broke ground on its first campuses, which are expected to come online next year. Aramco, the state oil giant, is in talks to buy a “significant minority stake” in Humain, while Qualcomm, Cisco and — potentially — Elon Musk’s xAI are among early partners.

For Blackstone, the move extends its global data center empire into a region flush with capital and ambition. It also aligns with the broader investor stampede into AI infrastructure as hyperscale computing demands from OpenAI, Nvidia and others strain existing capacity.

Amin said the goal is for Saudi Arabia to become the world’s No. 3 AI infrastructure hub, behind the U.S. and China.

— Holden Walter-Warner