Singapore Picks MS, Equinix, GDS and Airtrunk-Bytedance JV for Data Centre Permits

Singapore is working with both east and west as it said on Friday that Equinix, Microsoft, GDS Holdings and a tie-up between AirTrunk and ByteDance have won rights to develop new data centre projects as the city-state ends a four year moratorium on new developments in the sector.

The Economic Development Board (EDB) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) provisionally awarded the rights to develop a total of 80 megawatts of power capacity to the two US firms, China’s largest data centre operator and the Aussie-Mainland joint venture, after more than 20 bids were submitted for the pilot programme launched last year.

“We aim to allocate more capacity in the next 12 to 18 months to advance our interest as an innovative, sustainable, global digital hub,” the state agencies said in a statement on Friday. “We remain committed to the sustainable growth of the DC sector and will develop a roadmap together with the industry towards the development of Green DCs with lower carbon emissions in support of Singapore’s net-zero targets.”

The move marks the reboot of data centre development in Singapore after the Southeast Asia tech hub had called a moratorium on new projects in 2019 as growth of the sector threatened to consume a double-digit slice of the nation’s power capacity.

AI in Focus

While industry analyst had expected when the pilot program was announced in January that no more than three proposals would be accepted for a total of 60MW of capacity, the government announcement has exceeded those initial estimates, with a nod to the growing importance of computing capacity to economic competitiveness.

Further details on the selected proposals and capacity allotments had not been disclosed by the time of publication, with none of the companies involved in the process having commented as of press time.

The EDB and IMDA said they accepted the winning proposals due to their ability to support the city-state’s position as a regional hub, and offers of best-in-class energy efficient performance, including having achieved Green Mark DC Platinum Certification under Singapore’s framework for sustainable development.

The agencies said the submitted plans also feature extended international connectivity through submarine cables and new carrier neutral exchanges. Also integral to the winning bids was their ability to anchor services including artificial intelligence, machine learning and high performance computing, while linking with offshore data centres to complement Singapore’s capacity, according to the statement.

Beyond development of the data centre projects, the companies have also pledged “significant economic commitments” to Singapore, the agencies said.

“The proposals illustrate the continued confidence and the applicants’ commitment to innovatively grow the DC industry in a sustainable manner and strengthen Singapore’s value proposition as a key technology hub for the region,” the EDB and IMDA said.

The need to support development and application of new technologies appears to be a primary motivating factor in the country’s data centre expansion, according to the government authorities.

“With rapid advancements in Generative AI, EDB and IMDA will also engage industry stakeholders in the immediate term on the compute and connectivity infrastructure required to build a competitive AI ecosystem,” the agencies said.

Southeast Asia Boom Continues

Equinix’s upcoming project will add to its five existing data centres in Singapore, including its SG5 IBX facility in the Tanjong Kling data center park which went live in August 2021 and was further upgraded last year.

Elsewhere in Asia, the NASDAQ-listed firm has been expanding rapidly having entered Malaysia last November through a $40 million investment in a hyperscale facility in Johor, which came on the heels of its $74 million commitment for an IBX co-location facility in central Jakarta, Indonesia.

Microsoft is also beefing up its capacity in the city-state after a long drought since opening its first facility in the city-state in 2010, while construction for its second location kicked off in 2019, based on publicly available company records.

In January, the US tech giant also launched its first-ever Datacenter Academy in Asia offering an industry-focused curriculum to 300 students at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) in Singapore.

Macquarie-backed operator AirTrunk will soon have a second Singapore location to add to its 78MW existing hyperscale facility in Loyang which opened in December 2020, but this time will bring Tiktok’s parent firm ByteDance as a joint venture partner.

For GDS, the Shanghai-based data centre giant is following up on its Southeast Asia expansion after kicking off in Malaysia two years ago with a 54MW hyperscale facility at Johor’s Nusajaya Tech Park, followed by a 28MW project in Indonesia’s Batam southeast of Singapore in April 2022.

It is also co-developing eight facilities with 168MW of capacity in Johor state together with partner YTL Power International.

The Lion City continues to be one of the region’s top data centre hubs with 1,000MW of total existing capacity despite the construction moratorium, according to JLL’s 2023 Global Data Center Outlook.

JLL predicted the global hyperscale market will achieve a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent between 2021 and 2026, with the total number of data centres exceeding 1,000 by the end of 2024 from just 500 facilities five years ago.