Creating A Data Oasis

In March 2024, we held a special iMasons Advisory Council session to review our first State of the Industry Report. This meeting brought together 50+ senior executives to provide feedback on the final content we had gathered over the year from over 500 members in 50 countries.

Two key trends emerged in that report. First, move the data center to the power versus the power to the data center. Second, Clean Energy Zones—master-planned communities around clean energy that serve multiple industries, including multi-tenant data centers.

A clean energy zone example we used was the ACWA Power project at Oxagon in Neom, Saudi Arabia. This project will generate 600 tons of green hydrogen a day from 4GW of wind and solar. A number of executives from DataVolt, a global iMasons partner, were in attendance at the session. These executives were former executives at ACWA Power that had designed and deployed some of the largest, lowest cost renewable energy projects across the Middle East, including the green hydrogen project in Neom.

This example led to two crucial discussions at the meeting. Price and Data Protection. We wanted to understand how DataVolt could achieve this scale at < $0.02/kWh. If what we were seeing was real, this seemed to be the ideal location to build the newly coined AI factories moving to GW scale. It is the embodiment of a Clean Energy Zone. Conversely, a significant concern emerged: data protection. A member brought up the following scenario. Suppose we have a 1GW data center deployed in Neom with 800,000 NVIDIA B200 GPUs crunching 1.7 trillion parameters to train an LLM: How do you protect that data in the country? What if the KSA decided to seize that data? There wasn’t an answer to that question. We decided to table the discussion and keep track of this concept for the future.

This discussion stuck with me. So much so that I decided I wanted to see this myself and explore further. In October 2024, I took my first trip to Saudi Arabia.

My trip to Riyadh had two objectives. The first was to meet with KSA government officials to open a discussion around the 2024 State of the Industry Report and discuss the data protection concern raised at our executive summit. The second was to see a large-scale renewable energy project first hand.

Data Protection In The Desert

Nava Akkinen and Yahya Aldahiri from Data Volt facilitated the introduction for a discussion with Mohammad Alzeer and Rayan Alsaedi of the Ministry of Information Technology and Communication (MCIT).  I shared the findings in our 2024 report and concerns raised about data protection. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they had been addressing this very issue for the last three years.

Rayan shared the concept of data embassies for the public sector and data safe harbors for the private sector and their intent to enact this policy in the future. They explained it is a complicated piece of legislation but they believe they will get it through.

Data safe harbors and data embassies are carve-out zones within a country or jurisdiction that guarantee protection of the data that’s processed, stored, and transmitted through digital infrastructure that’s located in the carve-out zone. Data safe harbors are similar to special economic zones with clear regulatory frameworks and protections for data. Data embassies are analogous to an embassy—an area on foreign soil where a country’s sovereign rules and regulations apply—and operate as an embassy for public sector data on foreign soil.

This concept got my wheels turning. The Ministry legislation could address our communities data protection concerns and enable AI factories to be built in the region. They shared that this plant is one of many on the national grid used to power homes and businesses throughout the region. It is not currently designated for data centers and there are power wheeling limitations.

Solar in Action with Sudair

After the ministry meeting, we jumped in our SUVs and drove 180 km outside of Riyadh to see a solar project called Sudair. We quickly went from a bustling city environment to a vast open, flat desert landscape. Ideal for solar and data center construction.

The Sudair project was the first solar plant I had ever visited. I’ve seen pictures and reviewed  the size of these deployments but it didn’t sink in until I was standing in the middle of it. Sudair was a literal sea of PV panels. The site is 36 square kilometers generating 1.5GW of power for eight hours a day. That powers 185,000 homes and offsets 2.9 million tons of CO2 emissions each year. Each row of panels also had an automated cleaning system that operated at night to remove dust and sand to ensure maximum output of the panels. As I stood in the middle of the solar field I was stuck again by the sheer size.

We went back to the main office and visited the control system. I witnessed a 200MW drop in capacity in a matter of seconds. The team said this is normal when clouds pass over. Shortly thereafter, the plant was operating at full capacity again.

As we drove back to Riyadh and I went over what I had heard from the Ministry and what I had seen in Sudair, a few questions came up. Why was there no battery energy storage (BES) at the plant? The team explained that this was an earlier project and newer projects have BES installed to maximize the capture and increase the duration of the plant by discharging from those batteries at night. My next thought was why were there no data centers next to this consuming that power? By adding BES you could have 750MW of clean power 24x7x365. They shared that this plant is one of many on the national grid used to power homes and businesses throughout the region.

Seeking a Data Oasis

When we arrived back in Riyadh, we attended a dinner hosted by Mohammad Abunayyan, the founder and chairman of ACWA Power, co-founder of Vision Invest, and board member of DataVolt.

Our discussions centered around clean energy at scale, policy, and clean energy zones. I was impressed with the focus of the KSA, ACWA Power, and DataVolt as well as the sheer scale that they work.

As I flew back to Silicon Valley contemplating the 2024 report findings and what I had just experienced in Saudi Arabia, dots started connecting. The development of data safe harbors and data embassies could open the door for the deployment of digital infrastructure in regions with abundant and cost-competitive clean energy and in markets clamoring to participate in the digital infrastructure industry that are avoided today because of concerns about data protection. If the KSA could enact policy to solve the data protection challenge, they could enable the development of clean energy zones that could serve multiple gigawatt AI factories for the biggest companies in the world. This would essentially create a data oasis in KSA. Over the next six months, this idea kept coming to the surface in conversations I had all over the world.

The Art of the Possible

In March of 2025, Joe Kava from Google hosted a special iMasons Advisory Council session in Saratoga, CA. At “Chez Kava” we finalized the 2025 State of the Industry Report findings and dug into the emerging iMasons Social Accord. We also floated the idea of a follow up trip to Saudi Arabia to explore the art of the possible. We had a number of members sign up that evening.

In April Santiago Suinaga and I brought an iMasons delegation of nine senior members to travel to the Middle East to explore the art of the possible. This group included representatives from Apple, Citibank, Crusoe, JP Morgan, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Oracle. The intent was to have them experience what I had on my first trip, including exploring the potential of a data oasis in Saudi Arabia.

Soiree in Saudi

After arriving in Riyadh, our delegation met in the hotel lobby and headed to DataVolt headquarters for a discovery session to help attendees understand the different projects we will see. This adventure turned into a multi-hour engineering discussion on the challenges of renewable energy generation at scale, new GPU requirements, and how these elements affect the data oasis concept.

We ended the evening with a wonderful dinner at Diriyah, the birthplace of the first Saudi State and the ancestral home of the Saudi royal family.

KSA Ministry Meeting

The next morning, our delegation made its way to the Ministry of Investment offices where we were joined by leaders from the Ministry of AI and the Ministry of Communication Information Technology. For the next three hours, I had the prvilidge of facilitating a discussion with the attendees to provide industry insights framed around the 2025 State of the Industry Report five Ps: power, perception, people, planet, and data protection. Along with the Ministry of Investment, we were joined by leaders from the Ministry of AI and the Ministry of Communication Information Technology.

Oxagon

The next stop on our trip was Neom. Neom is a massive, futuristic planned community being built by Saudi Arabia in Tabuk Province. Launched in 2017 by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the site is at the northern tip of the Red Sea, due east of Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba and south of Jordan. The total planned area of Neom is 26,500 square kilometers. The vision includes five major projects, including an industrial city called Oxagon.

Our delegation was hosted by the Oxagon CEO, Vishal Wanchoo. This was a fascinating presentation and deep engineering discussion on the innovations they are bringing to bear, including the aforementioned 4GW of solar and wind that is being used to create 600 tons of green hydrogen a day.

Chairman’s Dinner

After the Oxagon tour, we flew back to Riyadh to attend a dinner with Mohammad Abunayyan, Vision Invest Founder and Chairman. It was such a special evening, complete with swords and tea.

Dubai CSP

After the incredible activities in KSA, our delegation flew to Dubai to see the The Mohammed Bin Rashi Al Maktoum Solar Park. It has the largest and most efficient Concentrated Solar Plant (CSP) in the world. This site is generating 4GW of renewable energy, including 950MW that concentrates solar panels on the point of a tower generating 565°C temperatures that heat rock salt. The rock salt acts as a massive energy storage system that releases power throughout the night as the temperature of the rock salt decreases from 565°C to 300°C. Each day the process repeats itself. This site has one of the lowest cost per kWh in the world.

Connecting the Dots

Our trip was educational and inspirational for all involved. We saw the art of the possible in clean energy projects that have achieved massive scale. Our delegation provided perspective to the Saudi government on how to attract AI factories to the region by addressing the data protection challenges outlined in the iMasons 2025 State of the Industry Report. The same week as our visit, the Ministry released a new policy on data embassies and data safe harbors for public comment. The timing of this trip and the release of the new data protection policy could not have been better, as the US and Saudi have entered into a $600B investment deal that includes a 20 billion USD investment by DataVolt to build AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the US.

The energy innovations our delegation saw in Riyadh, Neom, and Dubai were driven by DataVolt executives in their previous roles at ACWA Power. It is exciting to see how these will now be applied to data centers in Saudi Arabia and the US. The data oasis concept to create the worlds largest, cleanest, and most cost effective AI factories that are master planned and fully integrated into the local communities is becoming a reality.

From the West Coast to the Middle East

Some additional glimpses from The iMasons Executive Summit, Chez Kava Conclave in California and recent trips to Saudi Arabia.