Nebius Could Take 50MW at NEOM's Oxagon AI Campus

Saudi Arabia’s planned AI campus at NEOM has its first prospective customer. HUMAIN, the AI company owned by the Public Investment Fund, and the developer DataVolt have signed a “preliminary framework agreement” with Nebius, the Nasdaq-listed AI cloud company, for data-centre capacity at Oxagon, NEOM’s industrial city on the Red Sea coast, according to a joint release published on 21 October.

Under the proposed terms, Nebius “would become an anchor customer” for the campus. The capacity it would take is up to 50MW, which the partners describe as half of the initial 100MW now under construction, itself part of a first phase planned at 360MW. That capacity is “expected to become operational in phases from Q4 2027”.

No financial value was disclosed, and the wording throughout is careful: the framework is preliminary, the allocation is “proposed” and the offtake is “contemplated”. It is not yet a binding contract.

Six weeks after ground was broken

The partners are keen to stress the speed. The framework comes “just six weeks after announcing the commencement of construction”, the release says, and was signed on the sidelines of NVIDIA’s GTC Berlin conference. Nebius is expected to install NVIDIA-powered computing at the site to serve its AI cloud.

Tareq Amin, HUMAIN’s chief executive, framed the deal as proof of demand rather than of building. “The real measure of AI infrastructure is not how much capacity you build, but the demand you can secure and the value you can deliver,” he said, calling Nebius “our first customer”.

Rajit Nanda, DataVolt’s chief executive, made a pitch on cost. “Speed to market and infrastructure cost competitiveness will define the winners in the global AI compute race,” he said, adding that the aim is for Saudi Arabia to compete “not just as an energy powerhouse, but as an exporter of digital capacity”.

Aiman Al-Mudaifer, NEOM’s chief executive, said the agreement reflected “growing global demand for AI-ready infrastructure”.

What remains open

The release leaves several things unsaid. It gives no term for the arrangement, no price and no detail of which NVIDIA systems Nebius would deploy. It does not say when, or whether, the framework will become a definitive agreement, and it carries no comment from Nebius itself. For Nebius, the partners say only that it would expand the capacity available to support the growth of its AI cloud business.

It is not the first time Nebius has put its name to a campus that is still being built: TSN has reported it signing as the first customer of VOLT’s planned AI gigafactory in the Port of Rotterdam. For HUMAIN, an anchor tenant gives the Oxagon project a commercial footing that a construction start alone does not.

Whether the 50MW figure holds will depend on turning a framework into a contract. The first test of the schedule comes at the end of 2027, when the first phases are meant to switch on.