Princeton Digital Group aims to lead AI deployment across Asia Pacific after securing $1.3 billion in fresh funding, according to the data centre platform’s chief executive. Watch the full recording>>
With a presence in six countries in Asia Pacific, and more on the way, PDG is positioned to meet the needs of hyperscalers who are capture surging AI adoption on top of cloud growth of 20 percent year-on-year, the company’s chairman, CEO and co-founder Rangu Salgame said Friday in an interview as part of the final session of Mingtiandi’s 2025 APAC Data Centre Forum.
PDG made headlines in July when it announced that US private equity firm Stonepeak would invest $1.3 billion to purchase preferred equity in the company, and has a total of more than $3 billion in fresh cash this year. The fundraising is part of a plan to keep pace with a data centre industry where growth is accelerating more quickly than ever before, Salgame told MTD TV viewers during the forum, which was sponsored by Yardi.
“The thing that has changed with AI is not in the scale of capital, it’s the speed of scale that is required by these hyperscalers and AI companies,” Salgame said. “So now you’re talking about hundreds of megawatts to be delivered in a short period of time.”
Triple Digit Heat
PDG has been putting funds to work on projects such as its 96MW data centre campus near Tokyo, which it made fully operational in April as its first facility in Asia’s largest data centre market. That facility was reported to involve $1 billion in investment.
Rangu Salgame, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Princeton Digital Group
The company’s current platform has more than 553MW of live IT across 16 operational facilities in China, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Japan, which ranks PDG first among Asian data centre operators, excluding mainland operators, according to Mingtiandi research. Now Salgame and PDG are working rapidly to keep pace with burgeoning demand from clients implementing AI.
“So the kind of scale that we are talking about now is already triple digit,” Salgame told MTD TV. “You’re going to see the next wave of growth is no less than a couple of hundred megawatts at a time. And that’s the kind of expectations the hyperscalers are having, if you look at the large capacity that is required for AI training.”
Counting planned projects, Salgame’s company is on the way to more than 1GW of capacity across the region with the portfolio set to include 100MW in Greater Tokyo, 390MW across two data centres in Malaysia’s Johor and a 150MW Mumbai campus.
PDG also has projects in Indonesia and mainland China, with more facilities on the way in existing market and footholds in new markets expected in the coming months, according to Salgame.
“In India we’ll deepen more, in Japan we’ll deepen more, and we’ll enter new markets like Korea and Australia,” he said. “That’s the plan now.”
Hyperscale Expansion
PDG has raised more than $2.5 billion in capital this year, including $1.2 billion in debt financing and a $1.3 billion equity investment from infrastructure-focused fund manager Stonepeak.
In addition to its deal with Stonepeak, PDG has inked a number of debt deals which bring its fundraising to more than $3 billion this year, with Salgame tying the cash drive to a plan to lead the region in serving AI customers.
“With this level of capital that we have raised, our ambition is to be a market leader when it comes to AI deployment across the Asia-Pacific region,” Salgame said. “So being in the six markets – we are in China, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Japan – PDG is very well positioned to capture this way of growth on the top of cloud growth that is already growing about 20 percent year over year.”
While its 1GW of live and planned capacity already ranks PDG in the top five among data centre operators in Asia Pacific, Salgame expects the company to add an additional gigawatt or more in capacity at a much faster pace of growth, as it races to keep up with the expansion of its client’s operations.
“The next gigawatt is going to be much faster,” Salgame said. He added that, “In the next 3 to 4 years, we see that we could comfortably add about two gigawatts. So, double the capacity in much shorter period of time is what we are seeing the market offer and we will be able to seize the opportunity.”
Tokyo Forum Up Next
With the Data Centre Forum concluded, Mingtiandi’s next event will be live on stage in Japan on 5 November for the second annual Tokyo Forum.
After the inaugural Tokyo Forum welcomed 208 in-person attendees in 2024, this year’s event at the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo will bring together global investors and local decision-makers to discuss opportunities in Japan’s commercial, industrial, living and lodging sectors.
The full-day forum will also spotlight top players in exclusive interview sessions, including one-on-one sit-downs with executives from Brookfield Asset Management and Warburg Pincus.
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