Aiming to advance modular and portable data centre solutions in the UAE, UAE Hodler Investments, the UAE-based investment company headquartered in Dubai, has partnered with Vertical Data, the independent distributor of data centre infrastructure solutions.
By working together, the two firms will look to enable faster, more secure and highly efficient AI-driven computing. The partnership comes at a very important time in the Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) AI development journey. By 2030, AI is projected to represent up to nine per cent ($150billion) of GDP in GCC countries according to consultants McKinsey. Furthermore, a recent report by Turner & Townsend found that the Middle East data centre market is projected to grow from $5.6billion in 2023 to $9.6billion by 2029.
Commenting on the partnership, Hamid Djam, head of technology at Vertical Data stated: “Partnering with Hodler Investments is in line with our mission to offer our solutions in the Middle East region and UAE in particular. This is especially true given the investments UAE, KSA and other countries are making in AI data centres. Our solutions will ensure faster processing and improved efficiencies, while Hodler will ensure powering these hosting and data centres with sustainable mobile power.”
Offering solutions across the UAE
UAE Hodler Investments has a variety of firms in its portfolio. These include energy assets, AI, and digital asset mining startups such as PermianChain, Brox Equity, and NEXGEN as well as others. Working with subsidiary PermianChain, Vertical Data will offer its ‘solution in a box’ across the UAE, and wider MENA region.
Additionally, by working together, Hodler Investments and Vertical Data will bring high-performance, low-latency AI processing closer to where critical data is produced, reducing latency and enhancing real-time decision-making capabilities. Specifically, some North American infrastructure solutions that will be brought to the MENA region by Vertical Data include NVIDIA GPUs and data centres, which will lead to GPU-powered businesses.
Tapping into a booming sector
With active data centre projects amounting to $1.2billion and a future project pipeline of $433million, the UAE’s data centre industry is one of the fastest growing in the Middle East, according to Turner & Townsend.
Mohamed El Masri, managing director of Hodler Investments said: “Our partnership with Vertical Data will accelerate our mission of building distributed energy infrastructure to power compute clusters in the UAE and wider GCC region. Supporting and strengthening regional connectivity in AI and other data center operations to future-proof the sovereignty of our digital economy.”
The strategic partnership with Vertical Data comes after Hodler Investments announced its ongoing plans for a $500million Digital Energy Infrastructure (DEI) Fund with the participation of UAE-based GEWAN Holding.
The DEI Fund already secured soft commitments from lead investors and in-kind contributions in addition to offtake partners seeking energy and connectivity for AI and digital asset mining operations.