The United Arab Emirates’ digital revolution has an unlikely architect.
Khazna, a specialized real estate company that builds and rents out data centers, has quietly become the UAE’s AI infrastructure leader. The Dubai-headquartered company controls more than 70% of the country’s data center capacity. Its data centers store the servers of tech giants including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Starting with only 2 megawatts of capacity in 2014 — just enough to power about 1,600 homes — Khazna has become the invisible backbone of the UAE’s trillion-dollar digital revolution. It now runs facilities capable of lighting up 200,000 households. It builds and rents digital warehouses, providing the power, cooling systems, and secure space that keep everything from Netflix streams to ChatGPT responses humming across the region.
Khazna’s rapid expansion reflects the UAE’s broader strategy to diversify beyond hydrocarbons. More crucially, it shows the Middle East’s ambition to challenge traditional Western dominance in digital infrastructure.
“We view data centers as the foundational infrastructure for the future economy,” CEO Hassan Al Naqbi told Rest of World. “Our long-term vision is to be a trusted partner for that foundation — not only across the Middle East but globally.”
