The IPO, which will offer 30 percent of the company through issuing 102 million shares, will help raise the firm's capital to SR3.4 billion. KEC is based in Madinah and is one of four new economic cities the Kingdom is building to diversify its economy away from oil and provide job opportunities for its rapidly growing population. The offering will last until Sunday.

"The location of the KEC within the holy city is a continuation to an existing economy and existing infrastructure. It will be different from the other economic cities," said Bawazir at an earlier press conference on Saturday.

The firm is planning to develop 4.8 million square meters of land inside Madinah and hopes to benefit from the millions of pilgrims who visit the city every year, as it plans to build a station for linking Makkah and Madinah.

Under government plans, the new city will have 30,000 residential units and aims to attract IT companies and health and education centers.

KEC expects to sign contracts worth about SR700 million by the end of this year, one of them being the SR400 million contract with US-based Deep Cloud to develop a data center.

The KEC expects to attract around SR32 billion of investment, Bawazir said, adding that he does not expect the firm to borrow in the future. "The financing will be generated by the income, as we will reinvest some of the liquidity generated by profits," he said. The King Abdullah Foundation, Savola Group, Taiba Investments and Bin Laden Group are among the largest KEC shareholders.

"DeepCloud's investment in Madinah will ultimately reach upward of SR400 million, and our world-class IDC at the DeepCloud Madinah Technology Center will be the first of its kind in the Kingdom and MENA region," Prince Faisal said. "Our IDC will position Saudi Arabia as the principal nexus for high technology industries in the entire MENA region and will make the holy city together with the rest of the Kingdom the "Preferred Disaster Recovery and Cloud computing centers for the region."

DeepCloud Director Kenneth Close said: "Our IDC will be the first carrier and vendor neutral Tier IV facility in the region and will materially assist the Kingdom in achieving one of the top 10 goals of the new National Industrial Strategy. The DeepCloud Madinah Technology Center will provide a facility for technology-dependent businesses to co-locate their mission-critical IT equipment and create a symbiotic environment where knowledge and innovation industries such as Internet businesses developed by Saudi entrepreneurs can collaborate and thrive."