Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it plans to invest US$1 billion in Thailand over the next two years in cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure over the next two years.
As demand for artificial intelligence heats up, tech giants are racing to invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia, attracted by a growing plugged-in user base.
New data centres — warehouse-like facilities that store online files and power AI tools from chatbots to image generators — are springing up worldwide, and the sector is growing particularly fast in Asia.
“Our ambition is for Thailand to grow as a regional driving force in Asia’s digital and AI economy,” Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said in a statement after meeting with Microsoft president Brad Smith.
He called the Microsoft announcement a “clear expression of confidence in Thailand’s future”.
The announcement follows a number of data centre investments to support AI, as Thailand looks to speed up projects involving data centres, electronics and power generation.
Google launched a new “cloud region” in Bangkok in January, saying its data centres would contribute more than $40 billion in economic value to Thailand over five years.
Super-connected Singapore was long Southeast Asia’s data centre hotspot, but the city state halted developments between 2019 and 2022 over energy, water and land use worries.
That, along with an explosion of AI interest since the debut of ChatGPT, brought a surge of data centres to Malaysia, and increasingly Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
The investment by Microsoft includes developing digital skills of the Thai workforce, a statement by the government said.
Information technology (IT) spending in Thailand is expected to reach almost 1.1 trillion baht in 2026, up 8.4% year-on-year, thanks to AI infrastructure investment, according to a forecast by the business tech and insight firm Gartner.
Gartner forecasts that spending on data centre systems in Thailand by enterprises and service providers will record the largest growth, increasing 27.9% to 70.6 billion baht.
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