The Neom envisioned by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is not a shadow of its former self. In fact, it is more of a reincarnation, with the estimated $1.5 trillion futuristic city now working toward becoming home to a vast artificial intelligence data-center campus. The project will be set in Oxagon and is expected to break ground within months, potentially around November 2026, according to its developer, DataVolt. Neom and DataVolt signed an agreement in February 2025 to develop the 1.5-gigawatt campus at Oxagon, Neom’s port and industrial hub on the Red Sea. The first phase is expected to be funded through an initial $5 billion investment from DataVolt.
What Oxagon is primarily offering the future, in this case, AI, is a home. And what a home it will be. Its own renewable power supply, green hydrogen as a secondary energy source, Red Sea cooling, subsea connectivity and an industrial port capable of delivering its enormous equipment are all planned for one place, thanks to Neom’s scale and grand vision. So massive is phase one alone that it requires an initial investment of $5 billion, more than three times the reported construction cost of the Burj Khalifa. To understand what the complete 1.5GW campus could consume, think not merely of hundreds of thousands of households, but as many as approximately 1.5 million.
With much of Neom, including The Line, not unfolding quite as originally planned, Oxagon could now find a new reason to thrive as an “AI factory.” It will offer renewable power and grid infrastructure, high-density GPU servers, advanced liquid cooling, storage and networking, along with the operating systems and AI runtimes needed to make the entire setup work. Operations at this enormous facility will be handled by DataVolt, while Oxagon will lease the land and provide supporting infrastructure, including access to power and connectivity.
“The development [at Neom] has reached the last mile for the first phase, and we are now in the last stages of discussions with multiple customers,” DataVolt chief executive Rajit Nanda told AGBI. “So we expect to break ground in the next two to three months and get on with these AI factories.” The first phase is expected to become operational by 2028, receiving dedicated renewable power from Oxagon’s grid, drawn from the area’s solar and wind resources, all while remaining true to Neom’s original sustainability ethos.
