Dubai-based investment company Hodler Investments has partnered with Vertical Data. Working with PermianChain, a Hodler Investments subsidiary, Vertical Data will offer its ‘solution in a box’ across the UAE and MENA region.
Hodler Investments invests across industry verticals, including energy, AI, digital asset mining, etc. The company has funded several startups, such as PermianChain, Brox Equity, NEXGEN, and others.
Vertical Data is recognized for its cutting-edge infrastructure designs that enhance computing capabilities at the source of data generation. It offers a GPUaaS ‘solution in a box’ to power edge AI and edge data center operations.
The partnership will aim to advance modular and portable data center solutions, enabling faster, more secure, and highly efficient AI-driven computing.
This strategic alliance is especially significant given that AI will represent up to 9 percent, or about $150 billion, of GDP in GCC countries alone by 2030, according to consultants McKinsey. According to a recent Turner & Townsend report, the Middle East data center market is projected to grow from $5.6 billion in 2023 to $9.6 billion by 2029.
By working together, Hodler Investments and Vertical Data will bring high-performance, low-latency AI processing closer to where critical data is produced, reducing latency and enhancing real-time decision-making capabilities.
Hamid Djam, Head of Technology at Vertical Data, stated, “Partnering with Hodler Investments is in line with our mission to offer our solutions in the Middle East region and UAE in particular, especially given the investments UAE, KSA, and other countries are making in AI data centers. Our solutions will ensure faster processing and improved efficiencies, while Holder will ensure powering these hosting and data centres with sustainable mobile power.”
Through Hodler Investments, Vertical Data will bring its North American infrastructure solutions offerings, including NVIDIA GPUs, to data centers and GPU-powered businesses in the MENA region.
With active data center projects amounting to $1.2 billion and a future project pipeline of $433 million, the UAE’s data center industry is one of the fastest growing in the Middle East (Source Turner & Townsend.)
Mohamed El Masri, Managing Director of HOLDER INVESTMENTS, stated, “Our partnership with Vertical Data will accelerate our mission of building distributed energy infrastructure to power compute clusters in the UAE and wider GCC region. Supporting and strengthening regional connectivity in AI and other data center operations to future-proof the sovereignty of our digital economy.”
The strategic partnership with Vertical Data comes after HODLER INVESTMENTS has announced its ongoing plans for a $500 million Digital Energy Infrastructure (DEI) Fund with the participation of UAE based GEWAN Holding. The DEI Fund already secured soft commitments from lead investors and in-kind contributions in addition to offtake partners seeking energy and connectivity for A.I. and digital asset mining operations.
