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Khazna breaks ground on new UAE data centre projects

22 April 2025

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Abu Dhabi’s Khazna Data Centres has confirmed two new data centre facilities as part of its capacity expansion plans.

In a statement, the firm said it has broken ground on two new facilities – AUH4 in Mafraq and AUH8 in Masdar City, both in Abu Dhabi.

The two facilities will provide a combined 60MW of capacity and are due for completion in December 2026 and August 2026, respectively.

This takes the firm’s total capacity under construction to about 160MW, with construction works on the 100MW QAJ1 in Ajman “quickly progressing”.

QAJ1 is expected to become the region’s “first artificial intelligence (AI)-optimised data centre, to play a crucial role in supporting the growth of digital and AI-based services across the UAE”.

Khazna said the steel structures at QAJ1 are complete and that the facility’s initial project phase is due to be completed in December 2026.

The project includes the integration of advanced liquid cooling solutions to efficiently dissipate heat from graphics processing units and central processing units, and enable the rapid processing power required for AI applications.

According to Khazna, the three facilities, built to Leed Gold standards, will deploy technological advancements tailored to support both AI and cloud workloads.

The trend for industries across the board to embed AI into more of their critical processes is creating unprecedented capacity demand for AI-optimised infrastructure, notes Hassan Alnaqbi, Khazna’s CEO.

“The establishment of AUH4 and AUH8, as well as the strong progress we are making on QAJ1, reaffirms our position as a key enabler of the future economy that is currently being built in the UAE.”

Modular construction

Khazna is using a modular design architecture to improve efficiency during the build phase for both AUH4 and AUH8, to help ensure minimal waste and faster construction timelines.

It added that by employing adiabatic free cooling to improve cooling efficiency, these data centres are set to deliver industry-leading power usage effectiveness figures for the region.

New shareholders

In March, MEED reported that Abu Dhabi AI-focused fund MGX and US private equity investor Silver Lake had become minority shareholders in Khazna.  

This development follows the February announcement of UAE telecommunications group e&’s exit as a shareholder in Khazna.

Silver Lake is already a minority shareholder in G42, Khazna’s majority shareholder.

Khazna has grown significantly since 2020, when it had a capacity of just 40MW, following the 2021 merger of the data centre divisions of G42 and e&.

MEED previously reported that the company had exceeded its capacity target of 300MW by the end of 2023.

Photo credit: Khazna

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Jennifer Aguinaldo

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