AirTrunk's US$3 Billion Gulf Gamble Signals Trump Era's AI Infrastructure Revolution

The geopolitical realignment of artificial intelligence infrastructure has reached a defining moment as Australian data centre pioneer AirTrunk, backed by Blackstone’s considerable war chest, announces a US$3 billion partnership with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN, crystallising the Trump administration’s aggressive pivot toward establishing Western AI dominance through Gulf sovereign wealth.

The announcement, unveiled at Riyadh’s Future Investment Initiative, positions AirTrunk founder Robin Khuda’s company at the epicentre of what analysts describe as the most significant restructuring of global technology capital flows in decades.

This landmark deal follows Trump’s securing of a historic US$600 billion investment commitment from Saudi Arabia, with US$20 billion specifically earmarked for AI data centres.

It is no surprise that American capital, led by firms including Blackstone, strong believers in Gulf investment, is rushing to seize the wave of opportunities created since Trump's visit in May. That trip effectively opened the floodgates for hyperscalers, hedge funds, and private asset managers to invest heavily in the region.

As Blackstone has noted, data usage has increased 100-fold over the past 15 years, and even more strikingly, more data has been created in the past three years than in all of history combined. As AI continues to gain momentum, this trend will only accelerate. Global cloud migration is still in its early stages, and with cloud service revenues expected to more than triple in the next five years, data growth will be astronomical.

Blackstone has been focused on this space for the past five years. As Nadeem Meghji Sr, senior managing director has stated,

“There is no AI without data centres.” 

It’s clear there is a hand-in-glove fit between U.S. capital markets backing Gulf tech initiatives and world-class data centre operators like AirTrunk that currently dominate with of fleet data centre developments across Australia and Asia.

For generations, Saudi Arabia exported oil. Now it wants to export one of the digital era's most coveted resources: computing power. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seizing a chance to turn Saudi Arabia's oil wealth into tech influence. Few nations can match the kingdom's cheap energy, deep pockets and open land, the ingredients that tech firms need to operate the vast, power-hungry data centers that run modern AI.

Already, Saudi Arabia has been negotiating with American tech giants about using its future data centers and deepening their ties. Executives from OpenAI, Google, Qualcomm, Intel and Oracle attended the country's annual Future Investment Initiative conference, nicknamed Davos in the Desert. Next month, Prince Mohammed is scheduled to visit the United States.

Unlike the collaborative dynamics that characterised OPEC's oil cartel success, the Gulf's AI race reflects fierce regional competition rather than cooperation. As an oil exporter, Saudi Arabia has benefited from collaborating with energy-rich countries through OPEC Plus. In AI, no such cooperation exists, and Saudi Arabia trails in a regional race against the United Arab Emirates, which announced multibillion-dollar projects with OpenAI in Abu Dhabi this year.

The competitive landscape reveals striking disparities: whilst Saudi Arabia leads in planned data centre capacity with 2,200 megawatts versus the UAE's 500 megawatts in the pipeline, the Emirates maintains superior current infrastructure with over 188,000 AI chips and 6.4 gigawatts of power capacity. Both nations have committed identical US$100 billion AI investment pledges, yet pursue markedly different strategies.

The kingdom's ambitious plans also test U.S. foreign policy that uses access to advanced AI chips to steer nations away from China. Saudi Arabia remains subject to US restrictions on AI chip exports, with shipments of advanced accelerators requiring licenses from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. Despite Trump's May visit to Riyadh securing preliminary approval for HUMAIN to purchase 18,000 Nvidia chips, final sales clearance remains pending five months later amid Washington's concerns over the kingdom's continuing ties to Beijing.

The scale of Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN ambitions, targeting 6 gigawatts of capacity to handle 6% of global AI workload by 2030, faces scepticism about execution capabilities given the kingdom's limited AI expertise pool. During negotiations, Saudi officials questioned the necessity of adhering to U.S. export control regulations that would restrict chip usage, even suggesting housing Chinese chips in separate areas of data centre complexes from those designated for American chipmakers like Nvidia.

The significance of this partnership extends far beyond corporate dealmaking. The convergence represents a fundamental reconfiguration of global AI supply chains designed to maintain Western technological superiority while accessing Gulf capital and energy resources necessary for exponential AI infrastructure demand. Saudi Arabia's NEOM megacity, with its $5 billion data centre component, positions the region as a critical node spanning three continents.

Looking ahead to 2026, the success of AirTrunk's Gulf expansion will determine whether Australian technology companies can leverage this geopolitical realignment to capture dominant positions in emerging AI markets. With global data centre capacity demand projected to reach 163 gigawatts by 2030, double current levels, the next twelve months will prove whether Saudi Arabia can overcome regional competition and U.S. policy uncertainties to deliver on its transformative AI infrastructure promise.

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