I Squared Capital will invest up to $1 billion in digital infrastructure owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) as part of a new partnership.

Infrastructure investment fund I Squared has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF for “a deployment of up to $2bn in real estate and infrastructure assets owned by PIF and its portfolio companies.”

Half of this cash will go into digital infrastructure projects, with the other 50 percent earmarked for district cooling, both of which are described as “critical enablers” of the real estate sector.

Saad Alkroud, head of local real estate investments at PIF, said: “PIF presents an unprecedented pipeline of real estate and infrastructure projects in the modern world, projects that continue to attract leading investors, foster sustainable value creation, and generate commercially attractive returns. This MoU brings together PIF’s capabilities, scale, and ecosystems, alongside I Squared’s operational expertise and proven record in the infrastructure sector.”

PIF has been active in the data center space in recent years, predominantly through Humain, the AI data center company it established in May 2025 with the aim of delivering 6.6GW of data center capacity over the next decade.

It has agreed to buy 18,000 Nvidia GB300 chips – with "several hundred thousand" more on the way, according to Humain – and partnered with AWS for a $5 billion 'AI Zone,' and deployed Groq chips for inference.

In November 2025, it set up a JV with AMD and Cisco to deploy 1GW of data center capacity, and announced it was building a 500MW data center in Saudi Arabia with Elon Musk’s xAI.

Founded in 2012, US-based I Squared Capital has assets worth $60bn under management, and is an investor in other digital infrastructure companies, including European data center firm nLighten and APAC data center operator BDx, fiber firms Exa and Lightstorm, and thousands of cell tower sites.

In 2021, I Squared acquired Mexican data center firm Kio. It acquired Brazilian operator Elea earlier this year.

In May, it purchased 10 US data centers from Cogent.

Sadek Wahba, chairman and managing partner of I Squared Capital, said: “I Squared’s expanding partnership with PIF reflects the confidence and trust that has developed between the two institutions.

"With this MoU, we are evolving from partnership to action - with a shared conviction that PIF’s and Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure story is one of the most compelling in the world, and we look forward to contributing our global expertise alongside PIF in the Kingdom.”