AirTrunk deepens Malaysia bet with $3Bn Johor expansion
AirTrunk’s latest expansion in Johor underscores how Malaysia has evolved from a secondary Southeast Asian market into one of the region’s most strategically important digital infrastructure hubs. The company’s planned 280MW deployment – taking its total Malaysian pipeline beyond 700MW across four campuses – reflects the continued redirection of hyperscale and AI-driven demand into markets able to offer scale, speed-to-power, and supportive policy frameworks. Johor, in particular, has emerged as a key beneficiary of Singapore’s development constraints, leveraging its proximity to the city-state alongside comparatively greater land and power availability to attract large-scale deployments from regional and global operators. The announcement also highlights the increasingly international nature of capital flows into digital infrastructure, with AirTrunk continuing to expand aggressively following Blackstone and CPP Investments’ $16 billion acquisition of the platform in 2024. More broadly, the move reinforces a wider industry trend: AI infrastructure demand is accelerating the importance of emerging, power-rich markets capable of supporting multi-hundred-megawatt campus developments at speed…Read more
Asia Pacific Faces AI-Ready Data Centre Shortfall Despite Supply Growth
Asia Pacific’s data centre market is entering a period of significant supply growth, with capacity expected to double over the next three years, but CBRE’s latest analysis points to a widening mismatch between headline supply and AI-ready infrastructure. The region could face a 15–25GW shortfall by 2028, driven by constrained power availability and a lack of facilities capable of supporting higher-density AI workloads. This is important because AI data centres require materially greater power per rack, alongside upgraded cooling, floor loading, and network infrastructure, meaning much of the existing pipeline may not be fit for emerging demand. Despite these constraints, investment appetite remains resilient, with direct data centre investment reaching US$4.7 billion in 2024 and activity continuing into 2025. For investors, the opportunity is increasingly shifting toward advanced, power-secured assets, development platforms, and operators with scalable pipelines in markets such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and supply-constrained Singapore…Read more
OpenAI shifts away from owning data centres as AI infrastructure costs escalate
OpenAI’s reported move away from directly owning “Stargate” data centre infrastructure highlights the growing financial and operational realities underpinning the global AI infrastructure race. Originally positioned as a US$500 billion joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank to develop large-scale AI campuses across the United States, Stargate now appears to be evolving into a broader compute procurement strategy centred on long-term leasing rather than ownership. The shift reflects a wider industry dynamic: while demand for AI compute continues to accelerate, the capital intensity of developing and operating hyperscale AI infrastructure is becoming increasingly difficult even for leading AI firms to absorb independently. For the data centre sector, the development reinforces the strategic importance of power-ready third-party infrastructure platforms, particularly those capable of delivering capacity at speed through lease-based models. More broadly, it also highlights the growing divergence between cash-flow-positive hyperscalers and venture-backed AI companies, with access to capital, power, and scalable infrastructure increasingly becoming a defining competitive advantage in the AI market…Read more