A 120 megawatt data centre typically requires a capital investment of at least US$1.2 billion, depending on factors like location, design tier and land costs, and whether the facility is built for hyperscale AI workloads.
Oracle’s expansion confirms an earlier Bloomberg News story that it was in discussions to establish a cloud services centre in Indonesia. Representatives for Texas-based Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
DayOne, which is headquartered in Singapore, is the international arm of Chinese data center operator GDS Holdings. ByteDance is far and away DayOne’s largest customer, according to research firm SemiAnalysis, with Oracle coming in second. DayOne also didn’t respond to a request for comment. Nongsa Digital Park in Batam is already home to several other data centres, drawn by factors including the island’s free-trade zone status and its proximity to Malaysia and the wealthy city-state of Singapore.
Oracle currently has two cloud computing centres in Singapore and last year announced a US$6.5 billion plan to build a similar facility in Malaysia.
See also: Thai data centre capacity may triple on surging demand for AI
US tech giants from Meta Platforms Inc. to Google are building data centers across Asia to support an envisioned global boom in artificial intelligence services. Much of that investment has gone to countries with better-established tech ecosystems and networks such as Malaysia and Singapore, where Salesforce Inc. recently announced a US$1 billion investment.
Bain & Co. estimates that the global market for AI-related products could hit US$990 billion by 2027 as the technology’s adoption disrupts the way companies and countries do business.
OpenAI is also leasing a huge amount of computing power from Oracle as part of its Stargate initiative (to build data centres on American soil and overseas. (Stargate is OpenAI’s project with partners including Oracle and SoftBank Group Corp to invest US$500 billion in AI infrastructure.)
