Saudi Arabia has laid the foundation stone for the SDAIA “Hexagon” Data Center in Riyadh, planned as the world’s largest government data center by megawatt capacity and designed to Tier IV standards. The ceremony took place in the presence of senior leaders and under the direct support of His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister and Chairman of SDAIA’s Board of Directors.
Scale and technical classification
The Hexagon Data Center is planned to provide around 480 megawatts of capacity, making it the largest government data center in the world by power capacity, not just by physical footprint. The facility is expected to span more than 30 million square feet in Riyadh, reflecting the scale needed to host national‑level digital infrastructure and AI workloads.
The project is designed to meet Tier IV standards, the highest classification under the Uptime Institute framework, which requires full fault tolerance, redundancy in all critical systems, and very high service availability. This level of design focuses on maximum uptime, rapid recovery from failures, and strong physical and logical security controls for hosted systems.
Role in Vision 2030 and digital economy
Hexagon is a core part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plans to build a strong digital economy and position the Kingdom as a leading hub for data and artificial intelligence. The data center is intended to support large‑scale AI models, analytics platforms, and cloud services for government agencies and the wider economy, enabling data‑driven decision‑making at national scale.
Beyond serving domestic needs, the project is framed as a step toward making Saudi Arabia a regional and global player in the digital and cloud market, attracting investment and positioning Riyadh as a key node in international data and AI value chains. This links physical infrastructure with broader goals of economic diversification and competitiveness in the global digital economy.
Data localization, sovereignty, and compliance
Saudi Arabia’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and associated regulations place strong emphasis on local storage and processing of government data and many categories of sensitive or regulated personal data. Cloud and cybersecurity frameworks, including national cloud controls, require that critical workloads for public entities and key sectors remain within Saudi‑based, compliant data centers.
The Hexagon Data Center gives ministries and public organizations a sovereign, Tier IV environment inside the Kingdom to host their systems and datasets, supporting both compliance and operational resilience. By consolidating capacity in a large, highly available facility, it also reduces reliance on external infrastructure and strengthens national control over strategic data assets.
Impact on government, regulated sectors, and markets
For government entities, Hexagon is expected to become a central platform for hosting e‑government services, AI applications, big data analytics, and other digital systems that serve citizens and support policy making. The combination of high capacity, Tier IV resilience, and local jurisdiction aims to improve performance, reliability, and security for these services.
For regulated sectors such as banking, healthcare, energy, and critical infrastructure that interact closely with government platforms, the project signals a clear direction toward local, sovereign cloud and data center solutions. It also opens further opportunities in cybersecurity, cloud management, and AI tooling markets that align with Saudi Arabia’s push to become a major digital and data hub.
Beyond domestic needs, the project is also intended to reinforce Saudi Arabia’s position in the global digital economy, positioning Riyadh as a hub in international data and AI value chains.
