Safanad, a principal-led investment company that builds world-class businesses, 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.
