News

Abu Dhabi’s Khazna Announces $250M Data Center In Egypt

The new facility will be built at Maadi Technology Park in Cairo and is expected to have an IT load capacity of 25 megawatts.

Published

3 years ago

May 8, 2023

Nour Nasir

abu dhabi's khazna announces $250 million data center in egypt

Abu Dhabi-based Khazna Data Centers, one of the largest operators of its kind in the Middle East, is planning an expansion into Egypt with a new $250 million data center.

The facility will be built at Cairo’s Maadi Technology Park and is expected to have a capacity of 25 megawatts of IT load. The expansion addresses underserved markets in the MENA region, Hassan Al Naqbi explained in a recent interview.

Also Read: Emirates Just Unveiled The World’s First Robot Check-In Assistant

“We realize that to become regional and global, we must step outside the UAE,” Al Naqbi noted. “Egypt is sitting in a very good geographical location between Europe and the Middle East, sort of a gateway between East and West. A country like Egypt with a huge population has a lot of potential”.

hassan al naqbi ceo khazna data centers

Khazna was created in a 2021 merger between the Etisalat Group and Abu Dhabi AI company G42. The company currently operates 12 data centers in the UAE. It plans to double this figure over the next few years and move into other MENA markets, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Kuwait.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.