$3bn, 400MW: Mubbadrah's Consortium Plans an AI Campus in Oman

During Sultan Haitham bin Tarik's state visit to the United Kingdom, Omani investment group Mubbadrah Investment announced a consortium that plans to build a $3 billion AI data centre in the Sultanate. At full build-out it would have up to 400 megawatts of capacity. According to TradeArabia, the facility is designed for hyperscale computing operators and will be backed by 400MW of new solar generation with battery storage. US-based Crusoe has expressed interest in taking the capacity. This is a separate project from the Yamna data centre in Salalah announced during the same visit, and it puts a private Omani-led group at the centre of the country's push to host AI computing.

📌 Key Takeaways

• A Mubbadrah-led consortium plans a $3bn AI data centre in Oman with up to 400MW of capacity.
• Its partners are Sustopia Capital, Vela Tech and O2 Global Energy.
• O2 Global Energy will develop 400MW of solar plus battery storage, alongside grid power.
• Crusoe has expressed interest in taking the capacity. It has not signed a contract.
• At 400MW, this one campus is close to the 500MW ceiling the ministry set for AI data centres two days earlier.
• No site, construction timeline or financing structure has been published yet.

🏗️ What Was Announced

According to TradeArabia's report dated 24 October 2026, Mubbadrah Investment is leading a consortium of Omani and international companies to develop a $3 billion AI data centre in the Sultanate. The core facts:

• Investment: $3 billion (roughly RO 1.15 billion)
• Capacity: up to 400MW at completion, with room for later expansion
• Target customers: hyperscale computing operators running large-scale AI training and inference, as summarised by IndexBox
• Signing: a ceremony in London during the Sultan's state visit, attended by Nasser bin Khamis Al Jashmi, Chairman of the Oman Tax Authority, and Liane Saunders, the UK Ambassador to Oman (TradeArabia)

Mubbadrah's CEO, Yasser Albarami, said Oman's stability, strategic location and energy resources make it a strong candidate to become a regional home for AI infrastructure, TradeArabia reported.

🤝 Who Is in the Consortium

Mubbadrah is a Muscat-based holding group. Its chief executive told TradeArabia that its portfolio covers more than 20 companies in sectors including oil and gas, hospitality and healthcare. The partners bring different skills:

• Sustopia Capital: CEO Nikhil Chouguley called Oman a strategic extension of the company's 5GW data centre platform, which spans Denmark, the United States and the United Kingdom.
• Vela Tech: CEO Jeff Fini said the firm will draw on its AI data centre experience to handle design and to oversee construction through to completion.
• O2 Global Energy: Founder and CEO Yazan Faouri cited 12 years of solar and renewable development experience. The company will supply the power side.

All of these details come from the consortium's announcement as reported by TradeArabia. TradeArabia also reported that Sustopia and Vela Tech are working on about 20GW of AI data centre capacity worldwide. That is the companies' own figure, and we have not seen it independently verified.

⚠️ The limitation

None of the partners has publicly disclosed an operating hyperscale campus at this scale in the Gulf. The consortium's record in delivering a project like this is still unproven, and the announcement does not say how the $3 billion will be split between equity and debt.

☀️ The Power Plan: 400MW of Sun for 400MW of Compute

The facility will take power from Oman's national grid and from renewables. O2 Global Energy will develop 400MW of solar generation backed by battery storage (IndexBox, citing TradeArabia).

Matching solar capacity to IT load sounds tidy, but AI campuses run around the clock and solar does not. Unless the battery fleet is very large, the grid will carry much of the night-time load. That makes the project a test of how Oman's grid operators handle very large single loads. It is also why the size of the storage component matters more than the headline 400MW solar figure.

❓ Crusoe: Interest, Not a Contract

Crusoe, the US AI infrastructure developer, has expressed interest in becoming a potential off-taker for the campus's capacity. The consortium expects to sign a confirmation of that interest "in the coming weeks" (TradeArabia). Even that confirmation would be a statement of interest, not a binding agreement to lease capacity.

Crusoe already has links to Oman. As Oman Observer reported, the Oman Investment Authority invested in Crusoe in 2022 as part of a $350 million Series C round, then made a partial exit at 10.3 times its invested capital while keeping part of its holding. We covered that exit in our piece on OIA's Crusoe return. Nothing published so far ties OIA's stake to this consortium, and readers should treat the two as separate.

📊 How It Fits Oman's Data Centre Pipeline

This announcement adds to a crowded month. Two days before the London signing, on 22 October, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology launched the second phase of the National Digital Economy Programme. That programme includes plans for specialised AI data centres with capacity of up to 500MW. Oman Observer noted that the ministry did not name developers or give a timetable.

For background on the Salalah project, see our explainer on Yamna's £1bn+ Salalah deal. For the state-owned renewables angle, see our earlier report on O-Green's 200MW target. Gulf News reported that the UK visit also produced agreements on space cooperation, AI in education and up to £7 billion in UK export finance capacity.

A simple comparison shows the scale. If the Mubbadrah campus reaches its full 400MW, this single private project would use up 80% of the ministry's stated 500MW ceiling. Either the national figure becomes a floor, or not every announced project will be built at its headline size.

🔍 What We Still Don't Know

• Location: The announcement refers only to "the sultanate." It is not clear whether the campus will use the Muscat-based AI Special Zone, which offers the incentives available under Oman's special and free zones law, including possible customs exemptions on servers and AI processors (Library of Congress Global Legal Monitor), or a site closer to Duqm, Sohar or Dhofar.
• Timeline: No construction start or phasing has been published.
• Connectivity: The plan does not say which of Oman's subsea cable landings it would rely on for international traffic.
• Jobs: No local employment or Omanisation figures have been announced.

🇴🇲 The Vision 2040 Connection

Oman Vision 2040 aims to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons. AI infrastructure lets the Sultanate turn its land, sunshine and grid capacity into exportable digital services. The second phase of the digital economy programme targets RO 300 million in technology investment and 3,000 direct jobs a year. A $3bn campus would exceed that investment target several times over if it reaches financial close. That condition matters, because most of the job and supply-chain benefits come during construction and operation, not at signing.

💡 Why This Matters for Oman

This is the first large AI campus plan of the current wave to be led by an Omani private group rather than a foreign developer or a state entity. That gives local capital a direct stake. The test is what happens over the next few weeks and months: whether Crusoe's interest becomes a signed confirmation, then a binding offtake, and whether a site and financing follow. Until then, Oman has another credible-sounding pledge on paper. If it is built, it would make the Sultanate a serious contender for Gulf AI computing workloads, and it would show whether solar-backed data centres can work at hyperscale here.