Dubai billionaire plans to build data centres across Asia
Hussain Sajwani plans to invest about US$3 billion to build data centres across South-east Asia
DAMAC Group, backed by billionaire developer Hussain Sajwani, plans to invest about US$3 billion to build data centres across South-east Asia as the region becomes a hub for artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services.
Edgnex Data Centers, a unit of the Dubai-based conglomerate, envisions spending the capital in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand over the next three to five years, said Danish Nayar, senior vice president of investments and acquisitions. The first of three Thai facilities, which will start operating March in Bangkok, will feature Nvidia chips.
Privately-held Damac, which focuses primarily on real estate in Dubai, has been diversifying into sectors such as technology and fashion. The South-east Asian outlay is part of a plan to spend US$5 billion to US$7 billion on expanding Edgnex operations around the world, Nayar told Bloomberg News.
It aims to build digital infrastructure that can house the high-end servers essential for storing data and providing AI services. Founded in 2021, Edgnex already operates two data centres in Riyadh and Dammam, Nayar added.
The company has acquired land for two more data centres in Malaysia and Indonesia each, with the majority of them set to employ Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips, Nayar said. Edgnex is also exploring similar facilities in Vietnam and the Philippines, aiming to announce those plans in 2025.
“Today we have over 550 megawatts of projected capacity towards South-east Asia, which effectively means that this could be a US$5 billion market for us,” Nayar explained. “And we are on our way to increase further.”
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A longtime manufacturing powerhouse for automobiles and electronics, Thailand is playing catch-up with Malaysia and Singapore in boosting its high-tech industries.
It has bagged multi-billion dollar investment commitments from Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft in recent years.
Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang is in Thailand this week – the latest stop on an Asian tour this year that’s already encompassed India and Japan. He met Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday and offered to collaborate in AI education.
Edgnex is now setting up a joint venture with security startup Siam AI, an official Nvidia cloud partner. The Dubai firm will allocate some of its future data centre capacity in Bangkok to the local company, while jointly acquiring the Nvidia chips they will need.
Thailand is “the next frontier” for the world’s data centre boom, according to Macquarie Equity Research, which cited the country’s ample power supply and high grid stability as key selling points. But a shortage of skilled workers will prove a challenge, analyst Kaushal Ladha noted in a report last week.
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