• Scaled U.S. data centre platform to support acquisitions, development, and expansion to meet growing demand driven by AI inference and advanced digital workloads
  • Firm further deepens its digital infrastructure capabilities with the appointment of industry veteran Jeff Ferry as Partner and Head of Digital Infrastructure

Riyadh — Safanad, a principal-led investment company that builds world-class businesses, today announced that it is accelerating the growth of its U.S. digital infrastructure platform, Element Critical, through the launch of a new U.S. data centre platform supported by US$1 billion from leading U.S. institutional investment partners.

The new platform builds on Safanad’s success in establishing Element Critical as a rapidly expanding enterprise data centre operator and is anchored by the acquisition of two enterprise data centre facilities in Houston and Austin, Texas. It is designed to support continued expansion across the United States to meet rising demand driven by AI inference, advanced digital workloads, and increasingly power-constrained environments.

Safanad has spent the past decade developing Element Critical into a leading enterprise-focused data centre platform serving customers across technology, financial services, healthcare, energy, and other mission-critical sectors. The addition of substantial new long-term investment backing strengthens Safanad’s ability to accelerate data centre acquisitions, development, and expansion while continuing to scale Element Critical’s enterprise colocation footprint.

“We are proud to advance this next phase of Element Critical with partners who share our conviction in digital infrastructure and the evolution driven by AI,” said Kamal Bahamdan, Founder and CEO of Safanad. “Over the past decade, we have built Element Critical into a scaled, resilient platform, and this next phase meaningfully expands our capabilities in one of the world’s most critical infrastructure sectors. As digital infrastructure becomes an increasingly strategic priority in Saudi Arabia and across the Gulf, Safanad is also uniquely positioned to connect capital, operating expertise, and long-term partnerships across markets—enabling our investors and partners to participate in a sector that is central to the next phase of growth of the global digital economy.”

In parallel, Safanad has further strengthened its digital infrastructure capabilities with the appointment of Jeff Ferry as Partner and Head of Digital Infrastructure. Ferry brings more than 30 years of experience across digital infrastructure and data centre investing, including nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, and will work closely with Safanad and Element Critical to support the platform’s continued growth and execution.

Together, these developments reinforce Safanad’s conviction in digital infrastructure as a core global investment theme and underscore its ability to build, scale, and operate resilient platforms in one of the world’s most critical and fast-evolving sectors.

Beyond digital infrastructure, Safanad continues to actively expand its platforms across education and healthcare, two priority social infrastructure sectors where the firm has a proven global track record and is scaling its presence across Saudi Arabia and the broader GCC. Drawing on deep operating experience, long-term partnerships, and disciplined capital deployment, Safanad is building high-quality platforms aligned with the Kingdom’s and the region’s long-term development goals.

Guggenheim Securities and Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisors to Safanad and King & Spalding acted as legal advisor. ABG Advisory served as strategic advisor to Safanad. Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal advisor to the platform in connection with acquisitions of the Houston and Austin data centers. BofA Securities and Citizens Bank served as Joint Lead Arrangers and Joint Bookrunners, and Huntington National Bank served as Joint Lead Arranger for the transaction financing.

About Safanad

Safanad is a principal-led investment company that builds world-class businesses. We deliver enduring value by investing with conviction, operating with an athlete’s discipline, and aligning with our management teams and investors to grow great businesses for the long term. Safanad owns investment and operating platforms in Digital Infrastructure, Education, Healthcare, and Real Estate and is co-headquartered in New York and Riyadh.

For more information, please visit www.safanad.com.

About Element Critical

Founded in 2014, Element Critical is a premier data center operator in the United States. Led by an experienced executive team and supported by long-term investment partners, the company operates hybrid-ready, carrier-neutral facilities in Houston, Austin and Chicago and is actively expanding across key Tier 1 and Tier 2 markets. Element Critical serves a diverse mix of enterprise, hyperscale, AI and neo-cloud customers that require colocation and connectivity services capable of supporting both traditional workloads and GPU-intensive AI environments. The company focuses on building reliable, well-connected data centers that meet today’s performance demands while anticipating the infrastructure needs of next-generation technologies.

For more information, kindly contact:
FinMark Communication
Zahraa Taher
Managing Director
ztaher@finmarkcoms.com