Underlining the continuing effect of the AI boom on Asia, Thailand has reportedly approved an estimated US$2.7 billion of investments in data centres and cloud services from both local and foreign firms.
The announcement, made earlier this week, came from the country’s investment board which confirmed a number of specific projects. They include data centres from Chinese digital infrastructure company Beijing Haoyang Cloud&Data Technology, whose plan in Thailand includes a 300 megawatt data centre valued at THB72.7 billion (about US$2.2 billion).
Another company coming on board is Thai company, GSA Data Center 02, which has proposed a THB13.5 billion (US$402 million) investment for a 35 MW data centre.
Singapore-based Empyrion Digital, which develops and operates what it calls a new generation of future-ready sustainable data centres, plans to open a facility in Q1 2027. Empyrion is planning to invest 4.72 billion baht (US$140.5 million) in the 12MW data centre located in Bangkok. The facility is expected to span 9,960 square metres and offer connectivity to all fibre providers in the city. It will be optimised for AI and cloud workloads.
As Reuters reports, these companies will join others already on the way, including TikTok, which in January announced plans to set up a data hosting service in Thailand, valued at THB126.8 billion baht (US$3.8 billion). Google has said it will invest $1 billion in Thailand. Amazon Web Services has announced a US$5 billion investment in the country over 15 years. Microsoft has also announced it will open its first regional data centre in Thailand.
This is only the latest in some big investments of late. The Data Centre Dynamics website says that, in November 2024, the country's Board of Investment approved close to US$1.8 billion in data centre projects in Thailand, including a data centre for Google and another by GDS subsidiary DigitalLand Services. GDS is a leading developer and operator of high-performance data centres in China and South East Asia,
