The AI Infrastructure Boom Across Asia-Pacific

In the foothills of Malaysia’s Mount Pulai, surrounded by vast palm oil plantations, a remarkable transformation is underway. Four unassuming single-story buildings house powerful supercomputers that run 24/7, processing 1.8 terabytes of information per second using Nvidia’s advanced GB200 chips. This 20-megawatt facility is part of a massive 664-hectare data center park operated by YTL Power International, the utility arm of Malaysian tycoon Francis Yeoh’s conglomerate. Inside, massive three-meter fans cool rows of server racks connected by kilometers of cables. This facility represents just a portion of a $4.3 billion collaboration between YTL and Nvidia announced two years ago, with $2.4 billion already invested. “People said we were crazy to think we could build the equivalent of Singapore’s total data center capacity in Johor,” recalls Yeoh Keong Hann, YTL Power’s executive director. The timing proved perfect, aligning with Malaysia’s digital hub ambitions. Nearby, billionaire Robert Kuok’s K2 Strategic, led by his grandson, aims to quadruple its Malaysian data center capacity to 240MW. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has declared that “Malaysia aims to become a leading AI nation by 2030,” with goals to overtake Singapore in data center capacity within five years.

The AI boom has triggered a frenzied buildout of infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific region. Global tech giants including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are investing an estimated $240 billion over the next five years to expand their hyperscale footprint in the region. According to Cushman & Wakefield, these investments, combined with those from regional players, are expected to more than double data center capacity across Asia-Pacific to over 29 gigawatts by 2030, up from 12GW in 2024. By decade’s end, the region could become the world’s second-largest data center market, just behind the Americas’ projected 32GW capacity. This explosive growth has attracted several of Asia’s wealthiest businesspeople. In India, Gautam Adani’s flagship enterprise is partnering with Google on a $15 billion investment to develop what they claim will be India’s largest data center campus in Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, India’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, is building a 1GW AI data center in Gujarat while developing AI platforms with Google and Meta. As Ambani told shareholders in August, “We are making all of our businesses AI-native, positioning them for hypergrowth.”

High-profile collaborations are forming throughout the region, creating new digital hubs in previously overlooked locations. In South Korea, chips billionaire Chey Tae-won’s SK Group has partnered with Amazon Web Services on a $5 billion data center in Ulsan. Kim Beom-Su’s Kakao, which has a partnership with OpenAI, is building a $438 million facility near Seoul, while Samsung Electronics is developing memory chips for OpenAI and jointly constructing data centers in the country. In Taiwan, Terry Gou’s Foxconn and Nvidia are investing $1.4 billion to build a 100MW AI data center. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand are rapidly emerging as significant data center hubs as global tech companies expand their presence. The Chirathivat family’s Central Pattana in Thailand has joined with Warburg Pincus-backed Evolution Data Centers, while billionaire Sarath Ratanavadi’s Gulf Development announced a partnership with Google to build AI-powered cloud facilities. Similarly, billionaire Harald Link’s B.Grimm Power has teamed up with Singapore-based Digital Edge to invest $1 billion in AI data centers across Thailand, beginning with a 100MW center in the Eastern Economic Corridor.

This investment surge has dramatically affected stock values of listed data center companies in the region. DCI Indonesia became the archipelago’s second-most valuable listed company this August, with a market capitalization exceeding $37 billion. Its 2021 IPO made cofounders Otto Toto Sugiri, Marina Budiman, and Han Arming Hanafia billionaires. The company, which counts tycoon Anthoni Salim among its shareholders, is significantly scaling up operations to meet growing client demand. Currently operating with 119MW of installed capacity across greater Jakarta, DCI plans to increase this more than tenfold to 1.9GW, including a new hyperscale data center on Bintan Island. DCI’s remarkable success has inspired other Indonesian magnates to enter the sector: Franky Widjaja’s Sinar Mas Group has partnered with Kuok’s K2 Strategic to develop data centers near Jakarta, positioned close to existing Amazon and Microsoft facilities. Similarly, mining magnate Theodore Rachmat’s Triputra Group has teamed up with Singapore’s ST Telemedia Global Data Centres to establish its first data center near the capital, with plans for several more across Indonesia.

Beyond regional expansion, some of Asia’s tech billionaires are making significant investments globally. In China, which already boasts the region’s largest capacity, tech leaders are growing their international presence. Jack Ma’s Alibaba is investing approximately $53 billion to expand cloud computing infrastructure across Asia, Europe, and South America. Ma Huateng’s Tencent, which currently operates 55 data centers in 21 markets, is constructing new facilities in Japan and Indonesia. Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank, currently converting Sharp’s former LCD factory in Osaka into a 400MW data center at a cost of about $6 billion, recently signed up to invest in OpenAI’s ambitious $500 billion Stargate data center project in the United States. The sector’s potential has also triggered significant mergers and acquisitions. In the region’s largest transaction to date, a Blackstone-led consortium paid $16 billion last year to acquire AirTrunk, an Australian data center firm. According to founder and CEO Robin Khuda, AirTrunk currently has over 1GW of installed capacity across 13 facilities and expects to more than double this by 2030.

Despite the optimism, significant challenges remain. The rapid development of these resource-intensive complexes is placing enormous pressure on existing electricity and water supplies. While some developers like YTL are investing in solar energy and others like Samsung Electronics are exploring innovative solutions such as floating data centers with OpenAI, the scale of the energy challenge is daunting. A PwC report estimates that by 2030, renewable energy sources will be able to meet less than one-third of the increased electricity demand from data centers in the Asia-Pacific region. “The gap is significant—and closing it is critical,” the report emphasizes. Some analysts have also raised concerns about whether this aggressive data center expansion might be creating a market bubble. However, Jitesh Karlekar, director of Asia-Pacific data center research at JLL, notes that with the quantum leap in AI applications across critical sectors like healthcare, education, and defense, “the industry for now faces potential supply constraints” rather than excess capacity. As the AI revolution accelerates, Asia’s tycoons are betting big that the region’s digital infrastructure needs will continue to grow exponentially, positioning themselves at the forefront of this transformative technological shift.