Gulf Data Hub KAUST 1

Gulf Data Hub's KAUST 1 sits inside the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology's Research and Technology Park in Thuwal, on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast north of Jeddah. Ground broke in September 2017 on a joint venture between GDH, Saudi entity Data Hub Tech, and Jeddah-based contractor Ashi Bushnag Co., with the university itself acting as anchor tenant and co-developer. The facility opened as the first commercial Tier III data center located on a university campus in the region, built around a vendor-neutral model that lets research park tenants, university operations and outside enterprise customers colocate in the same building rather than depend solely on university-run IT. The published design calls for a minimum of 14.4 MW of IT load across a 27,600 sqm building, of which 8,000 sqm is dedicated white space, leaving a large share of the footprint for support and administrative functions relative to raised floor. The building carries Uptime Institute Tier III and LEED Silver certification. For KAUST, the facility extends the campus's research computing infrastructure into a commercial colocation model; for Gulf Data Hub, it marked the company's first confirmed foothold in Saudi Arabia.