{"id":3921,"date":"2026-01-08T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/?p=3921"},"modified":"2026-01-08T11:30:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T08:30:30","slug":"weekly-news-blast-8th-january-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/weekly-news-blast-8th-january-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly News Blast – 8th January 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Welcome to the GDCA Weekly News Blast! Check out the latest industry news from the GCC region below. Have any Middle East data centres news you\u2019d like to share? Email yours to imogen@gulfdca.com<\/a> with NEWS<\/strong> in the subject line.<\/div>\n
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Industry News<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Saudi Arabia<\/span><\/p>\n

Ground has been broken on SDAIA\u2019s new \u2018\u2019Hexagon\u2019\u2019 government data centre in Riyadh. SDAIA says the campus will ultimately span 30 million sq.ft (2.78 sq.m) and deliver 480MW of capacity, with Tier IV design certified by Uptime Institute. Named for its distinctive layout (two concentric hexagons around a central courtyard), the facility is intended to host 290+ government systems and has been designed to meet green building requirements. SDAIA positioned the project as a major national milestone aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, with President Abdullah bin Sharaf Al-Ghamdi noting it will be followed by additional centres to strengthen data sovereignty and security while enabling innovation and the digital economy, against the backdrop of rapidly expanding large-scale data centre development across the Kingdom. This build-out pipeline includes a 500MW data centre agreed by xAI and Humain, stc\u2019s 1GW capacity development with Humain, and Khazna\u2019s 1GW growth pipeline\u2026Read more<\/a><\/p>\n

Interesting News<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/h2>\n

Brookfield challenges tech giants with new AI cloud platform<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Global investment giant Brookfield is entering the AI cloud market with a new full-stack platform, Radiant, aiming to lower the cost of AI compute by leveraging its global access to land, power, and data centre infrastructure \u2013 a move that could put Brookfield in closer competition with established cloud providers, some of which also use Brookfield-backed data centre capacity. Reportedly, the offering is linked to Brookfield\u2019s Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund (BAIIF), which is targeting $10Bn of equity commitments to invest in the \u2018\u2019backbone\u2019\u2019 of AI, with Nvidia as an investor. Brookfield is positioning Radiant to serve governments and enterprises that need to store and process data locally (supporting sovereign AI use cases), while emphasising a disciplined approach to deployment rather than speculative chip buying. The fund is currently developing in France, Qatar, and Sweden \u2013 including a proposed 1.5GW Data4 development in France and a 750MW campus plan in Sweden subject to energy permissions \u2013 with Radiant expected to receive priority leasing, alongside broader energy initiatives such as Brookfield\u2019s $5Bn partnership with Bloom Energy to supply fuel cells for data centres worldwide\u2026Read more<\/a><\/p>\n

J<\/strong><\/em>LL<\/strong>: A $3Tn data centre investment supercycle by 2030<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Jll\u2019s 2026 Global Data Center Outlook forecasts a major investment \u2018\u2019supercycle\u2019\u2019 through 2030, estimating around $3Tn of total spend will be required as nearly 100GW of new capacity is added \u2013 effectively doubling global data centre capacity. JLL breaks this down as roughly $1.2Tn in real estate asset value creation, about $870Bn in new debt financing, and $1-2Tn of tenant investment in GPUs and networking, with the sector growing at an estimated ~14% CAGR to 2030. While AI-driven demand has raised bubble concerns, JLL argues fundamentals remain strong, citing 97% global occupancy and 77% of the construction pipeline pre-committed. The report highlights delivery constraints, including average equipment lead times of 33 weeks (around 50% higher than 2020) and rising build costs, with average global construction costs forecast to reach $11.3Mn per MW in 2026 (+6% YoY). JLL expects AI workloads could represent ~50% of capacity by 2030, with inferencing overtaking training by 2027, and flags power as the key bottleneck as grid connection lead times exceed four years in some primary markets \u2013 prompting greater focus on new energy sourcing and on-site generation. Regionally, JLL expects the\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Welcome to the GDCA Weekly News Blast! Check out the latest industry news from the GCC region below. Have any Middle East data centres news you\u2019d like to share? Email yours to imogen@gulfdca.com with NEWS in the subject line. Industry News Saudi Arabia Ground has been broken on SDAIA\u2019s new \u2018\u2019Hexagon\u2019\u2019 government data centre in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-news-blast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3923,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions\/3923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gulfdca.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}