Humain lands first customer as Nebius books 50 megawatts at Neom

Summary

• Nebius signed a preliminary framework deal to reserve up to 50 megawatts at Humain's Oxagon AI data center.
• That is half the first 100 megawatts now under construction inside a 360-megawatt opening phase.
• The booking turns a construction project into a commercially contracted one before capacity exists.

The latest

Cloud computing firm Nebius has agreed to reserve up to 50 megawatts of capacity at the artificial intelligence data center Humain is developing with DataVolt in Neom's Oxagon, according to Asharq Bloomberg. The preliminary framework deal gives the project its first announced customer, with capacity entering service in stages from the fourth quarter of 2027.

Details

• The numbers: The volume Nebius intends to book equals half of the first 100 megawatts currently under construction, according to Asharq Bloomberg. That first tranche sits inside an updated opening phase of 360 megawatts, itself a fraction of the campus target of up to 1.5 gigawatts.
• The timeline: Capacity allocated to Nebius is expected to come online gradually starting in the fourth quarter of 2027. The agreement arrived roughly six weeks after construction was announced, making it the earliest commercial signal of demand the project has disclosed.
• The technology: Nebius plans to deploy a computing architecture built on Nvidia technology to serve customers of its AI cloud platform, according to Asharq Bloomberg. The companies did not disclose the financial value of the framework agreement.
• Humain's framing: Chief Executive Tarek Amin said the real measure of AI infrastructure is "not the capacity you build, but the demand you can secure and the value you deliver," describing Nebius as the project's first customer.
• The origin: DataVolt and Neom signed an agreement in February 2025 to develop an AI data center campus at Oxagon with a target capacity reaching 1.5 gigawatts, backed by an initial investment of 5 billion dollars for the first phase.
• The build: In August, Humain and DataVolt announced the start of construction and the development of the first 100 megawatts, under a revised first phase rated at 360 megawatts rather than the originally framed scope.
• The business model: Asharq Bloomberg reported that Nebius marks a shift in the project's economics, moving it from investment in land, power and infrastructure toward allocating future capacity to an international client before that capacity is finished.
• DataVolt's position: Chief Executive Rajit Nanda assessed that the model could support Saudi Arabia's transition from an energy exporting power into an exporter of digital capacity, drawing on competitive power costs and the speed at which infrastructure is being built.
• Not disclosed: Neither company named the end customers that will use the reserved capacity, nor set out the conditions under which the preliminary framework would convert into a binding contract.

Background

Oxagon is the industrial component of Neom, announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November 2021 as the world's largest floating industrial complex. Humain has also been targeting a 2.5 billion dollar fund to build data centers.

Between the lines

Selling 50 of the first 100 megawatts before 2027 matters more as validation than as revenue. The project's stated ambition is 1.5 gigawatts, while its contracted demand so far is a fraction of a first phase of 360 megawatts. Nanda's digital capacity exporter argument rests on power cost and build speed, the two variables a single preliminary booking cannot yet prove at gigawatt scale.

What's next

Watch whether the framework converts into a binding contract, whether additional customers take the remaining 50 megawatts of the first tranche, and whether the fourth quarter of 2027 service date holds as construction advances.

Source: Asharq Bloomberg