UAE
MGX in talks to back Anthropic in major new funding round
Abu Dhabi’s state-backed investment firm MGX is reportedly in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Anthropic as part of a new funding round that Bloomberg says could raise more than $20Bn and value the generative AI company at around $350Bn. MGX has already backed Anthropic previously and has also invested across the AI stack, including stakes in OpenAI and xAI, as well as supporting major compute and data centre initiatives such as Stargate and other infrastructure plans…Read more
Du partners with Datawave to bring SING subsea cable to the UAE
Dubai-based telco du will host a new subsea cable at its Kalba landing station after signing a partnership with Datawave Networks to land the Singapore-India-Gulf (SING) submarine cable system in the UAE, with du also taking an investment stake. The SING route is planned to connect Singapore, Malaysia, India (Mumbai and Chennai), Oman (Muscat), and the UAE (Kalba), creating an alternative East-West connectivity corridor aimed at supporting hyperscalers, AI workloads, and enterprise traffic. The system is expected to include 16 fibre pairs with a reported minimum design capacity of 18 Tbps per pair, and – after years of slower progress since it was first announced in 2020 – the project has gained renewed momentum this year, backed by Cerberus Capital Management, with a targeted 2030 go-live. The announcement also reinforces Kalba’s growing role as a strategic landing hub, with the UAE already serving as a landing point for 20+ current and planned subsea cables…Read more
Khazna launches NexOps to bring data centre operations in-house
Khazna Data Centers has launched Khazna NexOps, a dedicated in-house operations organisation aimed at raising consistency, responsiveness, and reliability for hyperscale and AI-era infrastructure. The move transitions Khazna from a vendor-driven model to an insourced capability across more than 30 data centres, with the NexOps team scaling from 20 to 230+ specialists under 12 months while maintaining uninterrupted service for mission-critical workloads. Khazna says NexOps standardises performance through a unified operating model, measurable quality controls, and a structured capability framework spanning staffing, processes, KPIs, and governance – supported by 5000+ operational documents and competency-linked execution where only certified and trained personnel complete critical tasks. The programme also embeds increased automation, including an AI-powered command-and-control platform with Presight to monitor and optimise energy, cooling, equipment performance and security, plus climate intelligence with AlphaGEO to strengthen resilience and operational risk management, alongside trials of robotic patrol units for inspections. Khazna reports early gains across safety (around 2.3% PUE improvement), and operational readiness as it scales for higher-density AI workloads…Read more
Saudi Arabia
Microsoft confirms Saudi Arabia East cloud region launch in Q4 2026
Microsoft has confirmed that its Saudi Arabia East cloud region (in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province) will officially launch in Q4 2026, enabling customers to run workloads locally by the end of the year – almost two years after construction completed (December 2024). The region will include three availability zones, with Saudi officials framing the launch as a step toward building trusted, AI-ready national infrastructure, while Microsoft positioned it as a long-term investment in secure, sovereign-ready cloud foundations aligned with data residency and compliance requirements. Microsoft first announced the region in February 2023 and later signed an MoU in November 2025 with PIF and SITE to explore delivering Microsoft sovereign cloud services in Saudi Arabia. The launch will expand Microsoft’s global footprint to 70 cloud regions across 33 countries, with local adopters cited including ACWA and Qiddiya, as Saudi Arabia attracts competing cloud build-outs from AWS, Google, and Oracle, alongside Microsoft’s wider Middle East investments and existing regions in the UAE and Qatar – with plans announced in March 2025 for a cloud region in Kuwait…Read more