Pure Data Centre Group pauses Middle East investments after attack damage

In short: A major data center developer has paused new Middle East investments after one of its sites was damaged during the Iran war.

What's going on

Pure Data Centre Group, a London-based company that builds and runs data centers, says it is pausing all investments in Middle East projects after war-related damage to one of its facilities. A data center is a large building filled with computers that power apps and online services, like a warehouse for the internet.

CEO Gary Wojtaszek told CNBC the company does not expect investors to put in large amounts of new money until the situation “settles down.” The facility linked to Pure DC is a data center campus on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, and it was reportedly hit by shrapnel, which suggests a near-miss rather than a direct strike.

The pause comes as the conflict has begun to hit the region’s cloud infrastructure. Amazon Web Services, which many companies use to run websites and store data, reported that attacks caused structural damage and power problems at data centers in the region, and also triggered fire suppression systems that led to water damage. The outages disrupted services for customers including banks, payment platforms, Careem, and Snowflake.

A key issue is money and insurance. Developers are facing war damage that is hard or impossible to insure, according to the report. Amazon also waived customer charges for its Middle East cloud region for March 2026, a move reported elsewhere to have cost about $150 million.

What to watch

If attacks continue, more companies may spread computing across smaller sites instead of building huge campuses, like keeping inventory in several smaller warehouses instead of one big one. That could raise operating costs and make cloud services in the region more expensive or less predictable.

Source: Arstechnica