Schneider: Built locally, Gulf industry is ready for the AI shift

Arab News · RAZAN SALMAN · 2026-11-03 15:47 UTC

Schneider: Built locally, Gulf industry is ready for the AI shift

DUBAI: The Gulf's AI story is usually told in gigawatts and billions of dollars. Walid Sheta, Schneider Electric's president for the Middle East and Africa, thinks the number that matters more is distance: how far a data centre sits from the factory that builds it.

"To build a data centre, you'd better have capabilities not only in engineering but also in assembly and manufacturing, close to where you build the data centre," Sheta told Arab News.

The pressure to build is real. PwC Middle East projects that data centre capacity in the region will triple, from 1 GW in 2025 to 3.3 GW within five years. In its Global Data Centre Outlook, PwC says the region could attract $1.1 trillion in cumulative data centre investment by 2050, the fastest growth rate in the world.

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