Immy Dorse 
Well, here’s something you don’t see every day. It seems like Thailand is making a massive, and I mean massive, push into the world of data centers. The numbers being talked about are just staggering.
The Thailand Data Center Association is forecasting that the country’s total data center capacity is set to triple in just the next three years. From about 350 megawatts right now to a target of roughly 1 gigawatt by 2027. That’s a huge leap. To put that in perspective, the association’s vice chairman, Supparat Singhara Na Ayutthaya, mentioned that building out a single megawatt of capacity costs something like $10 million. You do the math on that expansion. The total investment needed is just enormous, something in the ballpark of $6.5 billion.
A Magnet for Tech Giants
And it’s not just local money. Thailand is pulling in serious interest from the biggest names in tech. We’re talking about Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet. Amazon alone is planning to drop $5 billion into the country over the next 15 years. Microsoft says it’s building its first regional data center in Thailand, and it’s going to be focused entirely on AI.
It makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. The country’s leadership has been pretty vocal about wanting to become a global data hub. The Prime Minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, talked about it in her New Year’s address. They’re betting that these data centers and the AI ecosystems they support are absolutely key to the nation’s economic future. Whether that pans out remains to be seen, but the commitment is clearly there.
Beyond the American Investment
But it’s not just U.S. companies writing checks. Chinese firms are also diving in headfirst, which adds another interesting layer to all of this. Just last month, a company called Galaxy Data Center announced a $2 billion plan to build a computing cluster in Rayong, a province on the east coast.
Its parent company, Hoyinn Technologies, wants to set up shop in a tech park out there. They’re talking about knowledge transfer and developing local talent, the usual things that come with these big foreign investments. And they’re not the only ones. Two other Chinese companies, Haoyang Data and Stratus Technology, also got the green light from Thai regulators this summer to build their own facilities. One of those projects is valued at over $700 million.
So you’ve got this sort of dual pipeline of investment happening—from the West and from China—which is perhaps a sign of how strategically important Thailand is becoming in this space. A recent report from a European firm, Etix Everywhere, noted that Thailand has already passed Indonesia in operational capacity and has a huge pipeline of projects in development.
It feels like a gamble, a very expensive one. But with steady power and water supplies, Thailand might just have the basics right to pull it off. The goal is to surpass regional leaders like Singapore and Malaysia. That’s a tall order, but they’re certainly throwing everything they have at it.