Egyptian contractor Hassan Allam Construction and India's Sterling & Wilson have won an estimated SR750m ($200m) contract to build the first phase of a data centre project in Riyadh.

The project's first phase will have an IT load capacity of 16.2MW, with the overall capacity reaching 50MW in the second phase.

The scope of work covers civil, architectural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) works, infrastructure works and other associated works.

Upon completion of both phases, the facility will comprise one 5MW standard-density hall and four high-density halls, each rated at 11.2MW.

Saudi Arabia's artificial intelligence (AI) firm Humain and Center3, which is the digital infrastructure subsidiary of local telecom company STC Group, are jointly developing the project.

The project for the first phase is 16 months.

In December last year, Center3 and Humain partnered to develop and operate AI-focused data centres across Saudi Arabia, with planned capacity of up to 1GW.

The partners said the first phase will deliver up to 250MW of capacity, designed for high-density AI workloads and large-scale model training.

The venture combines center3’s data centre operations and regional connectivity with Humain's full-stack AI capabilities, with the latter responsible for aligning facility design with advanced compute requirements and future architectures.

The companies said the programme will deliver purpose-built facilities engineered for high power density, low latency and resilient operations, to support large language models and other mission-critical AI applications.

They added that the initial schemes will serve as a template for subsequent rollouts as capacity scales towards the 1GW target.