Global spending on AI infrastructure is set to reach $31.6 trillion by 2050, and the Middle East, led by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is on track to capture around $1.1 trillion of that total, according to a new forecast from PwC. The region has the fastest growth rate of any market studied, even though its share remains far smaller than the United States, Asia-Pacific or Europe.
For UAE and Gulf investors, the numbers matter because they point to a rapidly expanding data center economy on the region's doorstep, one that is already drawing major projects to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.
How the global money is split
PwC's forecast puts the United States at the top of the table, with roughly $15.1 trillion, or 48 percent, of global AI infrastructure capital expenditure through 2050. Asia-Pacific is projected to account for $8.2 trillion, and Europe for $5.6 trillion. The Middle East's $1.1 trillion is smaller in absolute terms but stands out for its pace of growth.
Annual data center capital expenditure worldwide is expected to climb from about $800 billion in 2026 to $1.1 trillion by 2030, and then to $1.8 trillion by 2050, reflecting a sustained build-out of computing capacity over the coming decades.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia lead the regional push
PwC had previously projected that Middle East data center capacity could grow from about 1 gigawatt in 2025 to 3.3 gigawatts within five years, and the current forecast reinforces the UAE and Saudi Arabia as the two economies driving that expansion.
In Abu Dhabi, the 5 GW UAE-U.S. AI Campus is designed to draw on a mix of nuclear, solar and natural gas generation to meet its power needs. Alongside it, Stargate UAE is being developed as a 1 GW AI compute cluster, with its first 200 MW slated to come online in 2026.
In Saudi Arabia, Public Investment Fund-owned HUMAIN was launched in 2025 to build out AI capabilities, including data centers and cloud infrastructure, positioning the kingdom alongside the UAE as a regional hub for AI compute.
Equipment costs and power demand are rising together
ICT equipment already makes up about 70 percent of data center capital expenditure, and PwC expects that share to rise to 93 percent by 2050 as computing hardware becomes the dominant cost driver. The firm assumes most of this equipment will need replacing every four to six years, meaning operators face a continuous cycle of upgrades rather than a one-off investment.
That hardware needs power. The International Energy Agency expects global data center electricity consumption to roughly double, from 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to about 950 terawatt-hours in 2030. Electricity use by AI-focused facilities specifically is projected to triple over that same window, a trend that helps explain why projects like the UAE-U.S. AI Campus are being built with layered energy sources rather than relying on a single supply.
For the UAE, the combination of rising global investment and faster-than-average regional growth suggests the current wave of data center and AI compute projects in Abu Dhabi and across Saudi Arabia is likely to keep expanding well beyond the current decade, even as the country's share of the global total remains modest compared with the United States.