THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW
“ It is not trying to retrofit yesterday’ s infrastructure for tomorrow’ s AI. It is building for AI from a clean slate and that changes everything.”
Compliance pressure points the same way:“ GCC regulators are already tightening scrutiny on cross-border data flows. In-country sovereign compute is no longer optional for enterprises operating in this region, it is a compliance requirement that is only going to deepen.”
Free zones as infrastructure platforms The free zone model in the Gulf has historically traded on licensing speed and ownership rules. Paul describes a shift towards bundling compute into that offer.
“ Free zones are evolving,” he adds.“ They are no longer simply places to establish a company. The ones that matter are becoming platforms where infrastructure, regulation and ecosystem come together in one place.”
For tenants, that removes a procurement track and a legal review at the same time.
Paul says:“ In practical terms for an AI company, that means accessing sovereign frontier compute without leaving the ecosystem where you are building your business.
“ No separate procurement process. No data residency risk. No navigating infrastructure that was designed for someone else’ s use case. Every computation on UAE soil. Every byte of data under UAE jurisdiction. That is not a feature. That is the foundation.”
28 September 2026