Saudi Arabia's live IT power jumps 57% as data center market scales
Live IT power capacity in the kingdom has grown 57% since 2024, placing it joint fourth globally for growth, though the market is still building from a small base.
Saudi Arabia's live IT power capacity has grown 57% since 2024, a pace that places the kingdom joint fourth in the world for capacity growth, level with Finland. Few markets are adding live IT power faster.
The country also ranks among the ten most closely watched emerging data center markets, in a list built on DC Byte data. Five of those ten are in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Saudi Arabia is one of them. Finland sits third on the list, Denmark sixth, France ninth and Portugal tenth.
The absolute numbers tell a different story. Added together, the emerging markets on the list still hold a small share of global capacity next to established hubs. That shortfall is the opening: it leaves considerable room for further expansion in the kingdom.
Harry Goodson Wickes, who heads Savills' offices in Saudi Arabia and the Northern Gulf, said the growth reflects a broader change in how the digital economy is being planned. The shift, he said, goes beyond any single project or announcement. He expects the momentum to carry as sovereign investment and hyperscaler capacity scale up.
Government-backed digital-economy programmes form part of the base. So does demand from artificial intelligence and cloud workloads, which is climbing. Alongside that, the kingdom is widening access to power, land and connectivity for hyperscale and enterprise operators — the three inputs that decide whether a pipeline becomes live capacity.
For scale, the United States remains the largest data center market in the world with roughly 50 gigawatts of live IT power. China is second.
The growth rate deserves context. A 57% rise measured from a comparatively small base moves the percentage far more than it moves the megawatts. Saudi Arabia's market is expanding quickly and is still modest in size, which is why the capacity comparison with mature hubs stays lopsided even as the ranking improves.
Digital infrastructure has become a more visible component of the kingdom's economic diversification, tied to Vision 2030 targets rather than treated as a separate utility question. Power procurement, land allocation and connectivity are the constraints that determine how fast that shows up in live IT power. A Savills data center advisory team tracks exactly those three variables — capacity, power and land availability — across Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf.
Investors, operators and developers are now positioning for the next phase of that build-out.
