A UAE real estate magnate close to Donald Trump is pumping billions of dollars into data centres, hoping to cash in on the AI boom and become the global leader in the field.
DAMAC Properties chairman Hussain Sajwani, who attended the US president's 2025 inauguration and is second on Forbes' Arab rich-list, sees "huge" potential in data as demand for computing power soars.
Sajwani, whose Instagram feed pictures him with the likes of Trump, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, rode Dubai's real estate rollercoaster to amass a net worth of $15.3 billion, according to Forbes.
"We're part vision and part being lucky, and thank God, today we're building a beautiful business," he told AFP by video call from the Datacloud Global Congress in Cannes.
He described how hours of video calls during the Covid-19 pandemic convinced him to pivot to data centres, before OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 set off a frenzy over AI.
