Humain’s buildout picks up an Egyptian-Indian crew

An Egyptian-Indian JV has secured the contract to build a Riyadh AI data center for Center3 and Humain. Egypt’s Hassan Allam Construction and India’s Sterling & Wilson take an estimated SAR 750 mn (USD 200 mn) for the first phase, covering civil, architectural, MEP, and infrastructure works, according to Meed. Phase one carries 16.2 MW of IT load and is due in 16 months. A second phase scales the site to 50 MW, across one standard-density hall and four high-density halls of 11.2 MW each.

The site is part of the 1 GW program Center3 and Humain launched in December. Center3, STC Group's digital-infrastructure arm, and Humain are building data centers across the Kingdom for high-density workloads and large-model training, starting at up to 250 MW and using the early sites as a template as they scale toward 1 GW.

Humain has piled up data-center commitments quickly: Beyond the Center3 JV, it has a USD 5 bn AI Zone with AWS, a 500 MW site with Elon Musk’s xAI, a multi-gigawatt pipeline with DataVolt, and 211 land plots across the Kingdom. This venture is separate from Humain's SAR 8.8 bn, 250 MW agreement with Al Moammar Information Systems, which began issuing work orders this month.

For Hassan Allam, the data center win adds an AI line to a Saudi order book already built across the Kingdom’s flagships, almost always through its local arm and a partner. At Diriyah, Hassan Allam Construction Saudi and UCC Saudi took a USD 727 mn award for the Waldorf Astoria superblock; with AlBawani it landed a USD 490 mn contract for the Saudi Museum of Contemporary Art; and with OHL Arabia it’s building Saudi Arabia Railways' Dammam 2nd Industrial City connection. At Neom, the group is developing Container Terminal 1 and its marine services area alongside El Seif and China Harbour Engineering, and working with KAUST on what's described as the world's largest coral-reef restoration.