Qatar-based Ooredoo Group announced on Tuesday it has signed a QAR 2 billion (US$549.4 million ) financing deal to help fund its plan to accelerate its data centre business and establish itself as an AI infrastructure heavyweight in the MENA region.

Under the deal, QNB, Doha Bank, and Masraf Al Rayan will finance a 10-year hybrid facility, which Ooredoo claims is the largest ever transaction in Qatar’s tech sector in terms of value and duration.

Ooredoo will allocate the funds to carve out existing data centre assets from its telecom operations for its carrier-neutral data centre business, Mena Digital Hub, which was launched earlier this year. Ooredoo currently has 26 active data centres across Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, and Tunisia.

Ooredoo said a “significant portion” of the funds will also go towards consolidating and expanding capacity for its data centres and upgrading infrastructure to support growing regional demand for AI, cloud services and hyperconnectivity.

“The MENA region is one of the fastest growing markets for data centers worldwide, and there is significant untapped potential in AI, cloud services and accelerated computing,” said Ooredoo group CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo in a statement. “This financing deal marks a major milestone in our strategic vision for expanding our data center and AI business.”

Ooredoo created Mena Digital Hub to better cash in on increasing demand for localised cloud services and IT workloads, particularly from hyperscalers. To that end, Ooredoo has said it plans to invest US$1 billion to expand its data centre capacity to over 120MW in the medium to long term.

In July, Ooredoo Group signed a deal to become an Nvidia Cloud Partner (NCP) with the aim of developing an AI-ready platform in the MENA region. The agreement – which includes plans to create a GPU-as-a-Service offering for the region using Nvidia Tensor Core GPUs – is part of Ooredoo’s broader strategy to boost its regional AI infrastructure by enabling countries where Ooredoo operates to establish local clouds.