Thailand is emerging as the next data centre frontier in Southeast Asia, supported by Singapore Telecommunications' (Singtel) partnership with SET-listed Gulf Energy Development and potential investment diversification by ByteDance, says Maybank Securities.
Among projects recently endorsed by the Board of Investment worth US$2.7 billion (90.9 billion baht) are a 72.7-million-baht data centre investment with 300 megawatts by China's Beijing Haoyang Cloud&Data Technology and a 4.72-billion-baht data centre investment with 12MW by Singapore-based Empyrion.
GSA, a joint venture between Gulf, Singtel and Advanced Info Service (AIS), is allocating 13.5 billion baht to build a data centre with an IT load of 35MW in Chon Buri. With this new investment, GSA's capacity will eventually increase to 90MW, of which 50MW is in Samut Prakan.
DayOne, a Singapore-based data centre company, said on Tuesday it is pouring $1 billion into Thailand over three years for data centre development. The investment in Thailand is the second-largest within its data centre portfolio after Malaysia.
"Thailand is emerging as the next data centre frontier in Asean," said Hussaini Saifee, vice-president of Maybank Securities.
Bangkok, where most of Thailand's data centres are located, has 105MW of data centre capacity in operation, while Singapore, Jakarta and Johor have between 278 to 1,016MW, which "offers a long runway for growth", said Mr Saifee.
GSA is strategically placed to grow its business given vertical integration from power (Gulf), domestic/international connectivity from Singtel and AIS, and hyperscaler/enterprise relationships from Singtel/AIS, according to Maybank.
"As data centres in Thailand grow, Singtel stands to benefit by cementing its position as the leading regional player," he said.
With an established footprint in Singapore (62MW in operation plus 58MW under construction), upcoming expansion in Indonesia of 20MW and Malaysia (64MW), Singtel can leverage its existing assets and partnerships to capture increasing demand for co-location, hybrid cloud and AI-driven computing, said Mr Saifee.
TikTok plans to invest $8.8 billion in Thailand over five years. According to independent research firm SemiAnalysis, Tiktok's Chinese owner ByteDance has the most aggressive build pipeline in Malaysia, with a total lease commitment of 628MW by 2027, while Oracle has 321MW in lease commitments and is also building for ByteDance.
SemiAnalysis said Oracle may have issues with its Malaysia investments given the 7% limit on exported AI chips out of the US in a single country based on the US AI diffusion rule. Southeast Asia is one of ByteDance's largest markets outside of China for both short videos and e-commerce.
"We see Thailand investments as a potential diversification strategy by ByteDance," said Mr Saifee.
