KAUST Shaheen-III
Operational; King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is recorded as owning the AI hardware inside this site
Site data: Epoch AI GPU Clusters.
Ownership and operation
AI hardware owner · per catalog
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology 1 finding
Which organisation owns the AI hardware inside it?
AI hardware owner · per catalog King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Epoch AI's field for who owns the AI hardware, which it defines as not necessarily the owner or operator of the facility. source
Export controls and government links
No export-control designations were found in the checked company chains.
Headquarters jurisdiction
A company in the ownership chain is headquartered in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia: Not a Wassenaar participant; export controls administered by the General Authority of Foreign Trade and the Saudi Customs Authority. Export-control regimes listed for this jurisdiction: Saudi General Authority of Foreign Trade controls.
Capacity
Facility power
Estimated.
Power for IT equipment
Accelerators
Present inventory by partition
withheld No dense FP16 rate for NVIDIA GH200 has passed evidence review.
2,800 × NVIDIA GH200
installed (from the facility status)
Held: No reviewed dense FP16 rate. No dense FP16 rate for NVIDIA GH200 has passed evidence review.
KAUST press release 2025-11-17 and KSL Shaheen III documentation · 2025-11-17 · tier 1 · Shaheen III GPU partition: 2,800 GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips accepted from HPE in October 2025 (each superchip pairs one GPU with one CPU). The CPU-only partition is not counted here. GH200 variant not stated.
One partition is held, so no facility figure is derived; the held partition’s count and source remain visible and nothing is substituted for its rate. Rates are the cited dense FP16 figure per accelerator; the sum applies the methodology’s utilization and interconnect assumptions and is a theoretical aggregate, not one job’s throughput. The catalogue figures above are the record’s scalar fields (the source’s transcription, or its recorded correction) and are a different basis.
Power comparison
5.3 MW is at the 63rd percentile among the 310 operating AI Training records with a reported power figure. These represent 84% of the 369 operating AI Training records tracked; announced, under-construction and campus build-out figures are not ranked. The scale ends at the largest operating figure in this group, 1,276 MW.
- A newer operator disclosure supersedes an earlier statement this record once showed. The catalogue source transcribes KAUST's 2024 announcement of a planned 2,816-superchip GPU partition. KAUST's own release of 17 November 2025 states 2,800 GH200 superchips, accepted from HPE in October 2025, and the system documentation gives the same figure with a measured HPL result. The displayed chip count carries the 2,800 figure; no facility throughput or H100-equivalent is derived, because no primary source gives a dense FP16 figure per GH200 superchip. The status is operational on the acceptance and the measured run, while the release forecast general activation for early 2026 and no exact start of general access is stated.
Methods and sources
Ownership roles
Title identifies the legal owner of the site; operation identifies who runs it. AI-hardware ownership follows the catalog’s attribution of the machines inside, whose owner may lease the facility.
Each role requires its own attribution. An operator named in a source supplies evidence of operation only.
Parent companies
Ownership checks start with each company named at the site and follow recorded parent relationships. A company holding several roles is checked once. Its linked company page lists the relationships and their sources; further parents may remain undocumented.
Level 1 identifies a company at the site, level 2 its parent, and each further level another parent. Export-control designations and government investments are assigned to the company concerned.
Missing values
Unrecorded roles remain blank. Findings whose company position is unresolved stay in the list with that position labelled unknown.
Publication limits
Subscription corporate data helps identify parent relationships and sovereign investments. Publication is limited to relationship classes and supporting public sources; licensed records, identifiers and values are withheld.
Epoch AI estimates capacity using satellite imagery, permits and corporate disclosures. Its catalog is the source for this site record.
Related analysis
- KAUST Shaheen-III in the threshold comparisonEach listed site’s estimated compute against regulatory training thresholds, or the reason no estimate is admitted.
- Allied coordination: Non-coordinated jurisdiction in chainThe Allied Coordination Gap Analyzer lists this site under that class of ownership chain.
- Saudi Arabia country profileFacility capacity, government programmes and export-control access for the country this site is in.
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