NTT, DCI, Goldman, DC Byte See Japan, Korea Overcoming Data Centre Challenges: MTD TV

Strong customer demand and investment returns make data centre investments in Japan and Korea attractive despite high costs, power constraints and other obstacles, according to speakers from NTT, DCI, Goldman Sachs and DC Byte at Mingtiandi’s 2025 APAC Data Centre Forum on Thursday.

While investment in the two North Asian economies hasn’t matched the surge of commitments in the Southeast Asian hotspots of Malaysia and Thailand, developed megacities like Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul still offer investors the advantages of scale and an abundance of clients, the guests told MTD TV viewers during the forum, which is sponsored by Yardi.

With 1.6 gigawatts of live IT capacity, Japan remains Asia Pacific’s largest ex-China data centre market and a major growth hub for hyperscalers, cloud infrastructure and AI inference, said Yasuo Suzuki, executive vice president for APAC at Japan’s NTT Global Data Centres, one of the biggest providers of server sheds in Asia.

“Around Tokyo or even Osaka, there will be some limitations over supply of power, so that is the challenge,” Suzuki told MTD TV. “But as long as we have the power, capacity will be easy to sell in Tokyo and Osaka.”

Long-Term Stability

Japan’s data centre market offers the prospects of long-term stability and returns, said Phillipa Weber, an executive director for real estate within Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

“Another reason why I believe that Japan will remain a robust market is that it has strong connectivity to the USA and to the rest of the Asia Pacific region,” Weber said. “It’s a very stable economy with low cost of borrowing and government support. So this will always continue to attract the investors here.”

In the Korean market, public protests are pushing hyperscale projects further out to the edges of Greater Seoul, according to Dae Hyun Choi, head of Asia investments at DCI Data Centres, a Brookfield portfolio company that recently teamed up with Korea’s Koramco to develop a 40MW facility in Ansan, southwest of the capital.

“I think a lot of initial, early-stage projects are developing in Seoul’s metropolitan area, very close to residential,” Choi said on MTD TV. “The government stance has been discouraging from the civil complaints point of view.”

Jingwen Ong, APAC research manager at DC Byte, drew a distinction between hyperscale tenant profiles in Japan and Korea.

“In Japan it’s definitely still the usual suspects who are driving a very, very big part of the demand … Amazon, Google, Microsoft, they definitely do still seem to be the major off-taker for a lot of these sites,” Ong said. “For Korea, however, I think there has been more names that have been coming up. And one of the common themes across both markets is the Chinese hyperscalers.”

PDG Finale

The Data Centre Forum concludes Friday with a spotlight interview featuring Rangu Salgame, the chairman and CEO of Princeton Digital Group.

Salgame, who co-founded the Singapore-based company with Warburg Pincus in 2017, returns to MTD TV after PDG closed on a $1.3 billion investment from Stonepeak last month and will share what comes next for one of Asia’s largest data centre platforms.

The one-on-one interview will highlight the 1-gigawatt-plus platform’s strategies for scaling and growth amid the region’s AI-driven expansion.