Competition Authority Approves Establishing NEOM-based Data Center

The General Authority for Competition approved to establish a joint venture between NEOM and FAS Energy Commercial.
It stated that the new joint venture will develop, own and operate the next generation of sustainable ultra-high-scale data centers, in Neom.
Commodity dimension of the deal in the market for building and operating data centers, was defined by the authority, since the new joint venture will provide operating services, indicating that it has determined the geographical scope of the deal, in the Kingdom’s market, and accordingly it has studied the market for building and operating data centers, to determine whether there are concerns about competition, or not.
In its study, the authority expected that there would be no concerns affecting competition in the Kingdom, as the parties to the deal do not have any market shares in the data center market, which means entering a new facility for this market will raise competition in it, insted.
Such a joint venture project will localize data, accelerate and develop data centers, in the Kingdom, which will lead to achieving the goals of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, by exceeding the 1,300 megawatts barrier of data centers, in the Kingdom before 2030.