Market dynamics in data center buildouts and dealmaking are complex, but there are some common threads that are spanning the globe. Analysts Soon Chen Kang and Stefanie Williams join host Eric Hanselman to explore their research in the Asia Pacific market. AI demand is a driving force and concerns about power availability can be a headwind, but there are regional nuances that make the markets that comprise the APAC region unique. One treats the market as a cohesive whole at one&#x27;s peril! Geopolitical concerns have a significant impact on both demand forces and capacity uptake. Access to GPU&#x27;s to feed AI applications takes on new dimensions in a market where technology embargoes are moving workloads. Neoclouds are a new market provider and driving new builds, as well. The boom days of speculative building have tapered off, in many cases, due to the availability of power, but that doesn&#x27;t mean activity is slowing. Activity is shifting to find available capacity, but a common challenge in some of these early markets is the lack of transparency on both power deals and the build and financing processes. Check out the research to get more details. More S&amp;P Global Content: Compute sovereignty: The strategic importance of digital infrastructure AI in action: unleashing agentic potential Hyperscaler earnings quarterly: What price inference? Will datacenter growth in India propel it to global hub status? For S&amp;P Global subscribers: Beyond disaster recovery: Greater Osaka&#x27;s rise as a stand-alone data center hub APAC data center growth on course in 2026, driven by hyperscaler, regional neocloud demand Rising community opposition impacts site selection, cancellations and delays increase Singapore kicks off tender process, promising at least 200 MW for data centers 2026 Trends in Data Center Services &amp; Infrastructure Host/Author: Eric Hanselman Guests: Soon Chen Kang, Stefanie Williams Producer/Editor: Dylan Scheible Published With Assistance From: Feranmi Adeoshun, Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith,

Asia Pacific Data Center Trends

Next in Tech

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Next in Tech

## Participants

- **Eric Anselman** (S&P Global Market Intelligence)
- **Sunshen Kang** (None)
- **Stephanie Williams** (None)

## Transcript

Welcome to Next in Tech, an S&P Global podcast where the world of emerging tech lives. I'm your host, Eric Anselman, Chief Analyst for Industry Research at S&P Global. And today we're looking at the latest developments in the Asia Pacific data center markets. Joining me to talk about them are analysts Sunshen Kang and Stephanie Williams. Welcome to the podcast to you both. Thanks for having me, Eric. Thanks, Eric. It's great to have you on. You've both been doing research in terms of what's been evolving in the markets.

Of course, the impacts of that little thing we refer to as AI. All the different things that have been going on in this market. And you both actually just recently backed from some conference work there. Can you give us a little background in terms of what that market looks like and what you're looking into as far as the research goes? Yeah, I think as far as how the market is evolving. So if you just look back at 2024 when I attended the DCT-APEC conference in Bali

and to fast forward two years, I think there's a lot of positive sentiment from the initial optimism. So when I was there in 2024, there were still a lot of questions as in how AI will really impact demand in this part of the world. So it was still very much early stage because Asia is always lagging North America in terms of how cloud infrastructure started in North America. And we saw that trend with AI as well.

But I think two years on, the conversations have instead shifted to whether there's really power to support all this demand. The demand has actually materialized, but not quite evenly. Currently, some markets are seeing more demand, not necessarily domestic demand, but also to service regional compute. We are seeing that in Southeast Asia, especially for a few markets or a few hubs.

Second tier metros, Johor, there's a data center that spread close to Singapore. It's growing so tremendously starting from 2022 and now it's a 600 megawatt life capacity market currently from just 10 megawatt just three years ago. So it's an amazing growth story. And we are seeing that being replicated in other second tier metros like in Bangkok, like in Jakarta.

But like I said, it's mostly to support regional compute. Those could be neoclots and those could be Chinese hyperscalers that are expanding overseas to assess AI chips. So these are the trends. But again, it's very fragmented. We are seeing these are Southeast Asia while these are second tier metros are catching up. But again, India is a different story. India, you have so many U.S. hyperscalers.

They are committing to investments in different metros all across India. And India is a very large market by itself, even without AI, even before pandemic. So it's a huge growth story. Large population, fast growing economy, high tech ...

Asia Pacific Data Center Trends

Transcript

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Asia Pacific Data Center Trends

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.