According to the newspaper, Southeast Asia is witnessing a sharp rise in data centres driven by surging AI demand and multi-billion-USD investments by global tech giants to build new infrastructure serving AI and cloud services.

The Jakarta Post noted that super-connected Singapore was long Southeast Asia's data centre hotspot, but the city state halted developments between 2019 and 2022 over energy, water and land use worries. That, along with an explosion of AI interest after ChatGPT's debut, brought a surge of data centres to neighbouring Malaysia, and increasingly Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The article quoted Trung Ghi of the consulting firm Arthur D. Little as holding that hosting data centres is a "win-win situation" for governments, noting it boosts business efficiency with faster online tools and grows local economies as people come to work at new tech parks.

The Jakarta Post also noted that although Vietnamese banks have relatively low capital buffers, with a Tier-1 capital ratio of around 9% – roughly half the Southeast Asian average, the gap is expected to narrow in the coming years as higher capital requirements are introduced.

According to a report by auditing firm KPMG, Southeast Asia’s data centre capacity by 2030 is projected to triple compared to 2025 levels, driven by a tenfold increase in AI adoption.

Vietnam emerges as new hotspot for AI data centre investment

A wave of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) data centres is sweeping across Vietnam, with both domestic and international corporations announcing multi-billion-US dollar projects that are set to transform the country into a rising hub in the regional AI infrastructure map.