‘The Donald of Dubai’: UAE billionaire near Trump bets $66 billion on AI to change into the world’s knowledge king
DAMAC Properties chairman Hussain Sajwani, who attended the US president’s 2025 inauguration and is second on Forbes’ Arab rich-list, sees “large” potential in knowledge as demand for computing energy soars.
Sajwani, whose Instagram feed photos him with the likes of Trump, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, rode Dubai’s actual property rollercoaster to amass a internet value of $15.3 billion, in keeping with Forbes.
“We’re half imaginative and prescient and half being fortunate, and thank God, at present we’re constructing a stupendous enterprise,” he advised AFP by video name from the Datacloud International Congress in Cannes.
He described how hours of video calls throughout the Covid-19 pandemic satisfied him to pivot to knowledge centres, earlier than OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 set off a frenzy over AI.
Sajwani has earmarked websites in 13 nations throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the Center East which, if all accomplished, may have a complete capability of 6,000 megawatts, costing roughly $66 billion to construct.
“The concept got here throughout Covid, the place all people was locked down and I used to be spending lots of hours on Zoom,” Sajwani mentioned. “It was very apparent that Zoom and different companies that have been doing e-commerce have been going to develop.
“So I assumed the info centre enterprise would have a future. Truthfully, I by no means thought there could be such development.”
Drone assaults
A mixture of opportunism and success has made Sajwani one of many Center East’s greatest property builders, incomes him the nickname “the Donald of Dubai”.
He began in catering however moved into property within the Nineties, leaving him well-positioned for an actual property increase when Dubai opened its market to overseas consumers in 2002.
After surviving near-wipeout throughout the 2008 world monetary disaster, DAMAC has constructed 60,000 properties with one other 60,000 below building and operates in a dozen nations, Sajwani mentioned.
In 2017, he opened Dubai’s Trump Worldwide Golf Membership, and early final yr he stood side-by-side with the newly inaugurated president to announce a $20 billion funding in US knowledge centres.
DAMAC Digital, launched in 2021, has now accomplished websites in Thailand and Saudi Arabia, with eight in whole anticipated to be operational by the yr’s finish.
The footprint additionally consists of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy, Finland and Sweden, in addition to the United Arab Emirates.
Sajwani was unfazed by the Center East battle, the place drones struck knowledge centres within the UAE and Bahrain throughout the preliminary weeks of Iranian assaults.
“We took the choice 4, 5 years in the past to do knowledge centres and we have continued,” Sajwani mentioned.
“The battle has confirmed to us that UAE is sort of resilient and the federal government did an important job of defending the nation.”
‘High on the planet’
5 “hyperscalers” have signed up as shoppers for DAMAC’s knowledge centres. Though DAMAC can not disclose their names, hyperscalers are main gamers in cloud and AI companies and embody manufacturers akin to Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Sajwani mentioned DAMAC Digital was now on the right track to outstrip DAMAC Properties as the most important firm in his empire, which additionally consists of funding and logistics arms.
“Now we’ve nearly 6,000 (megawatts) landbank,” he added, referring to parcels of land with sufficient energy and fibre connectivity to assist a knowledge centre.
“If we construct all that, that is large.”
Sajwani dismissed considerations a couple of potential AI bubble or oversupply, saying “within the coming three or 4 years, the demand is big.
“And AI goes to create a revolution in each side of human beings’ life.”
He mentioned DAMAC is setting its sights on at some point overtaking Equinix, the world’s greatest knowledge centre supplier with greater than 280 websites.
“We need to be greater than them. We need to be the highest on the planet,” he mentioned.
