Southeast Asia’s AI Boom Is Becoming a Race for Power

Most of the AI infrastructure story is told in American terms: hyperscaler capex, gigawatt campuses and, lately, a fight over who pays for the grid. Far less attention goes to how fast the buildout is moving in Southeast Asia.

Asia Pacific’s data center development pipeline reached a record 26.5GW in the first half of 2026, and Southeast Asia now holds about half of the region’s capacity under construction, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Malaysia leads with 1,039MW being built, followed by Thailand at 859MW, and Johor alone nearly doubled its under-construction capacity to 602MW in six months. BMI attributes Malaysia’s run to hyperscaler investment, lower operating costs and a widening base of enterprise and domestic cloud demand.

But not all of the capacity in Malaysia is interchangeable. Rack-scale AI systems such as NVIDIA’s GB300 NVL72 need far denser power and cooling than the conventional cloud and enterprise halls the region has mostly built until now.

That is the capacity Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) is lining up for its AI cloud unit, Bitdeer AI, a preferred NVIDIA Cloud Partner. Michael G. Potter, Chief Financial Officer of Bitdeer Technologies Group, described the market this month: “Demand for liquid-cooled, rack-scale AI capacity in Southeast Asia is running ahead of what the market can deliver, and customers are asking for it earlier and in larger blocks.”

The company has been acting on that read. In the span of four days this month, Bitdeer AI announced two new Malaysian facilities. A901, a 67MW campus under a 10-year data center services agreement, becomes its third Malaysian hub alongside Cyberjaya and Johor. It is engineered for GB300 NVL72 systems, with delivery targeted to begin in the first quarter of 2027 and reach the full 67MW in the second quarter. A103, a 60MW facility under an 8-year agreement, expands the existing Cyberjaya campus and is designed for liquid-cooled NVIDIA systems including the next-generation Vera Rubin platform, with energization expected in the first quarter of 2028.

Together, the two agreements added 127MW and lifted Bitdeer AI’s secured capacity, meaning capacity it owns or holds under an executed data center services agreement, from about 59% to about 95% of its target of up to 350MW by the first quarter of 2028. Across Malaysia, Norway and the United States, Bitdeer AI’s secured capacity now totals 333.5MW.

BTDR announced another 8-year agreement for the Malaysian facility they are leasing, which brings them to 333.5MW secured of 350MW target to deliver by 1Q28. with ~30MWs contracted currently from customers. In our model we get to ~$7B in AI Cloud revenue for FY28, with big step up exiting 2027, assuming stable pricing from most recent deal from last month at $22M per MW. The Norway MWs require capex to build out, but the others are leased sites with the main capex being GPUs

— matthew sigel, recovering CFA (@matthew_sigel) October 12, 2026

A103 is the more telling of the two. In a market where approvals are harder to win, it expands a campus that already has power, liquid cooling, and networking in place. Potter says that improves time to market, and that Vera Rubin-generation capacity is what customers are asking about for 2028.

Bitdeer estimates its active pipeline for AI cloud capacity exceeds $10 billion, and is careful to note that the figure reflects opportunities under commercial discussion, not backlog.

The AI buildout will keep being told as an American story. But Southeast Asia is writing a second one, fast enough that Malaysia is already choosing what gets built. When a hot market gets selective, the advantage shifts to whoever has already secured the power and the space.