(Bloomberg) — Damac Group, backed by billionaire developer Hussain Sajwani, plans to invest about $3 billion to build data centers across Southeast Asia as the region becomes a hub for artificial intelligence and cloud services.
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Edgnex Data Centers, a unit of the Dubai-based group, expects to spend 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 in March in Bangkok, will house Nvidia Corp. chips.
Privately owned Damac, which primarily focuses on real estate in Dubai, has diversified into sectors such as technology and fashion. The Southeast Asian spending is part of a plan to spend $5 billion to $7 billion on expanding Edgnex’s operations around the world, Nayar told Bloomberg News.
It aims to build a digital infrastructure that can accommodate the advanced servers necessary to store data and provide artificial intelligence services. Edgnex, which was founded in 2021, already operates two data centers in Riyadh and Dammam, Nayar said.
Nayar said the company has acquired land for two additional data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia, most of which are set to use Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips. Edgnex is also exploring similar facilities in Vietnam and the Philippines, with a goal of announcing those plans in 2025.
“Today we have over 550 megawatts of power projected towards Southeast Asia, which effectively means this could be a $5 billion market for us,” Nayar said. “And we’re going to increase even more.”
Thailand, long a manufacturing powerhouse in automobiles and electronics, is trying to catch up with Malaysia and Singapore in boosting its high-tech industries. It has secured billions of dollars in investment commitments from Amazon.com Inc. Google and Microsoft Corp. In recent years.
Edgnex is now creating a joint venture with security startup Siam AI, which is Nvidia’s official cloud partner. The Dubai-based company will allocate some capacity at its first data center in Bangkok to the joint venture company, according to Nayar. You will also jointly obtain the Nvidia chips needed to run the operations.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is in Thailand this week — the last stop on an Asian tour this year that has already included India and Japan. He met Prime Minister Baitongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday and offered cooperation in AI education.
“We are here to help Thailand build its own artificial intelligence,” Huang said during an event in Bangkok on Wednesday. He said Nvidia would look to “invest in the Thai ecosystem” with its tools, infrastructure and know-how.
Thailand is the “next frontier” of the world’s data center boom, according to Macquarie Equity research, which cited the country’s abundant power supply and high grid stability as key selling points. But a shortage of skilled workers will pose a challenge, analyst Kushal Ladda noted in a report last week.
Siam AI has signed agreements with units of Thai conglomerates Charoen Pokphand Group and Gulf Energy to develop AI infrastructure and solutions in its data centres.
–With assistance from Advith Nair.
(Updates with Huang’s comments in 10th paragraph.)
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