Ultra-High-Capacity Storage Is Becoming the Backbone of AI Ambitions in the GCC

News

1. Ultra-High-Capacity Storage Is Becoming the Backbone of AI Ambitions in the GCC

2. Private Sector to Outpace Governments in $20 Billion Earth Intelligence Market

3. Saudi Arabia to Add 112MW to Data Centre Capacity in New Deal

4. UAE Dominates Global Data Centre Rankings as Region Becomes Digital Infrastructure Hotspot

5. AI Adoption Climbs 233% Globally with the Middle East Showing Similar Momentum, Report finds

6. du Launches UAE’s First Sovereign Hypercloud for Government and AI Innovation

As Gulf economies accelerate national digital transformation agendas, data infrastructure is under strategic pressure to scale. Seagate’s new 30TB hard drives enter the region’s market at a pivotal moment.

From Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, governments are investing heavily in AI ecosystems, smart cities, and sovereign cloud platforms. These national strategies are rapidly reshaping the Middle East’s digital infrastructure, positioning the region as a global technology and innovation hub. As AI and analytics become embedded across sectors, demand for high-capacity, high-integrity data storage is reaching new heights.

Seagate’s launch of its new 30TB Exos® and IronWolf® Pro hard drives responds directly to this demand. Engineered on the company’s Mozaic 3+™ platform and powered by advanced heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, the drives are designed to meet the performance, efficiency, and scalability requirements of modern AI workloads, whether in sovereign data centers, industrial edge environments, or hybrid cloud ecosystems.

“The UAE and Saudi Arabia are rapidly becoming digital infrastructure powerhouses,” says B.S. Teh, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Seagate Technology. “Saudi Arabia’s data center market is growing at a 21.87% CAGR, expected to reach 1.19 GW by 2030, while the UAE is home to some of the region’s most advanced facilities.” Together, these countries are driving a GCC-wide data infrastructure boom, with the market projected to reach $9.49 billion by the end of the decade.

In such an environment, Seagate views ultra-dense storage as more than a technical requirement—it’s a strategic enabler. “Reliability and scalability of infrastructure isn’t optional, it’s foundational,” Teh notes. “Whether it’s supporting AI factories in Riyadh or sovereign cloud platforms in Abu Dhabi, our mass capacity offerings provide the resilience, scalability, and energy efficiency needed to power the region’s digital ambitions.”

The Infrastructure Behind National Visions

As regional governments implement sweeping digital economy frameworks, such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the UAE’s Digital Economy Strategy, Seagate’s new 30TB drives are positioned to support the technical underpinnings of these ambitions.

“These drives are not just bigger—they’re smarter and more efficient,” Teh explains. “They deliver the highest areal density in the industry and are enterprise ready. In a market flooded with incremental upgrades, we’re delivering a generational leap in capacity and performance.”

The ability to store more data in less physical space is key in the Middle East, where energy efficiency, geographic redundancy, and local data control are strategic concerns. “Think of it as fitting an entire library’s worth of knowledge into a compact space,” says Teh. “That allows emerging AI factories and digital transformation hubs to scale without expanding their physical data center footprint.”

Responding to Regulatory and Market Pressures

Data localization laws such as the UAE’s Federal Decree Law No. 45 of 2021 on Personal Data Protection (PDPL) are increasing demand for on-premises, sovereign storage solutions. “Governments and enterprises alike are keen to keep data within borders,” says Teh, “and that’s driving the need for secure, high-capacity infrastructure at the national level.”

At the same time, edge AI is moving from experimentation to production. “Whether it’s a smart factory, a retail chain, or a surveillance network, our 30TB drives help customers address real-time processing demands while minimizing power usage and maximizing resilience,” he says.

Across verticals, the use cases are rapidly expanding. In manufacturing, predictive maintenance systems rely on continuous high-speed data ingestion. In finance, fraud detection and algorithmic trading demand fast access to historical data. In the security and public safety space, AI-powered video analytics are driving storage needs across border control, smart cities, and critical infrastructure.

Building a Scalable, Sustainable Digital Backbone

The region’s growing interest in disaggregated data center architectures, where compute, storage, and networking are scaled independently, makes Seagate’s 30TB drives particularly relevant. “We’re working hand in hand with OEMs and cloud service providers to integrate our drives into these next-generation designs,” says Teh. “AI factories are a great example—data centers reimagined to manufacture intelligence at scale.”

Sustainability is also top of mind. “Our 30TB drives offer the highest storage density per watt in the industry,” Teh notes. “They reduce energy consumption, cooling requirements, and floor space—key factors as GCC countries work toward Net Zero goals while expanding their digital capacity.”

A Strategic Inflection Point

With the GCC’s data infrastructure at a strategic inflection point, ultra-high-capacity storage is no longer a back-office concern; it is central to national competitiveness in AI, cybersecurity, and digital leadership.

“AI is only as good as the data it learns from,” Teh emphasizes. “And in the Middle East, AI is quickly becoming a core enabler of public and private sector innovation. Our drives are built to support this transformation—at the core, at the edge, and everywhere in between.”

As regional CIOs, CTOs, and policymakers accelerate digital maturity across sectors, investments in foundational technologies like storage will determine whether their ambitions are met at scale, securely, and sustainably.