The Gulf's AI infrastructure race has produced enormous announced capacity figures, but construction status is a better near-term measure of execution. Projects that have land, engineering activity and a defined first phase are materially different from long-term campus plans.
Two of the clearest current examples are Stargate UAE in Abu Dhabi and the HUMAIN-DataVolt development at Oxagon in Saudi Arabia.
Stargate UAE has moved into construction
Stargate UAE is planned as a 1GW AI cluster inside the broader 5GW UAE-US AI Campus. The initial 200MW phase is the important near-term unit because that is the first delivery milestone rather than the full campus ambition.
The project gives Abu Dhabi a visible path from international partnership announcement to physical buildout.
Oxagon now has a defined capacity under development
HUMAIN and DataVolt say 100MW is under development within a 360MW first phase at Oxagon. The wider DataVolt campus has larger long-term ambitions, but the 100MW figure is the strongest current construction signal.
Those figures are nested and should not be added together. One describes current development, one the first phase and one the longer-term campus concept.
The next proof point is commissioning
Construction is not the same as operating capacity. The next evidence is energisation, hardware deployment, commissioning and customer workloads.
GBR's permanent infrastructure tracker will move projects between stages only when the evidence supports the change.
| Project | Country | Near-term scale | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stargate UAE | UAE | Initial 200MW phase within 1GW cluster | Under construction |
| HUMAIN + DataVolt Oxagon | Saudi Arabia | 100MW within 360MW first phase | Under development / construction |
| AWS + HUMAIN AI Zone | Saudi Arabia | Up to 50MW by 2028 | Planned |
| center3 + HUMAIN | Saudi Arabia | Starting at 250MW | Development programme announced |