APAC Data Centre Weekly

Editor’s note

Thailand Froze 49 Builds — Permission Is This Week's Binding Number

Lee Heggan · Editor · Week of 7 September 2026

Thailand stopped construction on 49 data centres this week, with new rules promised inside a month. Set that against the record. In January 2025 AWS launched its Thailand region on a $5bn, 15-year pledge; the Thai BOI approved ByteDance's $3.8bn that same month and another $2.7bn by March 2025, including a 300MW Rayong campus. Thailand was carrying about 150MW live at the end of 2023. It runs circa 200MW today, with roughly 780MW under construction — close to four times the installed base. The freeze lands on that 780MW, not on the paper behind it.

It didn't come from nowhere. Oil from a Bangkok data centre contaminated water in the same news cycle, and the public backlash story has been building across Asia for months. Regulators move when residents do.

Thailand wasn't alone this week. Singapore's Digital Infrastructure Bill turns July's licensing proposal into actual legislation. Transgrid warned that Sydney's data centre demand is stretching grid capacity. And Firmus told the AFR it is tilting to Asia because Australian approvals have stumbled, with an IPO in view. Four markets, one input running short.

What did get funded is worth separating out. Firmus signed OpenAI as anchor tenant for Malaysian capacity and says its contracted book has passed 900MW — a neocloud with a covenant behind it, which is more than most of this pipeline can claim. Zankore closed a $3.1bn loan pointed at a 1GW Indonesian AI factory: the debt is real and large, but the gigawatt carries no date, and Indonesia has circa 500MW live against only about 120MW under construction. Goodman won approval for 135MW at Macquarie Park. In a week like this, an approval is the asset.

Then Nvidia and a set of Australian partners put out 2GW by 2027. Australia already holds APAC's biggest build book — 2.3GW under construction, roughly 11.5GW of total pipeline against circa 1.6GW live. But it added only about 220MW of live capacity in the three years to 2026. Two gigawatts inside fifteen months would be more than everything running in the country today. It is at least dated, which earns it more weight than an undated mega-number. It also landed the same week the transmission operator said Sydney is tight. Both things are true; weight them together.

One more: HyperVault has secured 264 acres in Hyderabad for a 1GW AI campus, ten months after TPG put $1bn behind it. Hyderabad runs circa 450-470MW live with just 18MW under construction. Land is genuine progress. It is also the cheapest step in the sequence.

Sources this week