BANGKOK- Thailand has approved 90.9 billion baht ($2.7 billion) worth of investments in data centers and cloud services, its investment board said on Monday, the latest additions to the country’s expanding tech sector.
The projects include data centers from China’s Beijing Haoyang Cloud&Data Technology, Singapore-based Empyrion Digital, and Thai company, GSA Data Center 02, it said.
Beijing Haoyang’s plan in Thailand includes a 300 megawatt data center, valued at 72.7 billion baht, while the Thai firm has proposed a 13.5 billion baht investment for a 35 MW data center.
An AI boom has led to a rush to build infrastructure in Southeast Asia, including data centers that house computer servers and equipment that companies use to process and store data.
In January, Bytedance’s TikTok announced plans in Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy, to set up a data hosting services valued at 126.8 billion baht, according to the investment board.
Last year, Alphabet Inc’s Google said it would invest $1 billion in Thailand, which followed Amazon Web Services announcing a $5 billion investment in the country over 15 years.
Microsoft has also announced it will open its first regional data center in Thailand.
Thailand’s government wants to lift economic growth above its 3 percent target this year and is confident a strong first half will be followed by momentum from the next phase of its signature stimulus program and measures worth 150 billion baht ($4.4 billion).
Those stimulus measures, including the next stage of its “digital wallet” scheme, will be implemented by the end of the third quarter.
