Alphabet Inc’s Google is considering building a large data center in Vietnam, a person briefed on the plans said, in what would be the first such investment by a big US technology company in the Southeast Asian nation.
Google is weighing setting up a “hyperscale” data center close to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s southern economic hub, the source said, who declined to be named, because the information is not public.
It was not clear how quickly Google would reach a decision on an investment, but the source said internal talks are on and the data center could be ready in 2027.
Photo: Annegret Hilse, Reuters
A spokesperson for Google declined to comment about the data center plan.
Hyperscale centers are the largest in the industry, with power consumption usually similar to that of a big city.
A hyperscale data center with a power consumption capacity of 50 megawatts (MW) could cost between US$300 million and US$650 million, according to estimates based on data published by real-estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle in a report this year on data centers in Vietnam.
Google’s move was motivated by the large number of its domestic and foreign cloud services clients in Vietnam and the country’s expanding digital economy, the source said, adding that the Southeast Asian nation was one of the fastest-growing markets for YouTube, Google’s popular online video sharing platform.
The top data center operators in Vietnam, based on computing space, are state-owned Becamex IDC Corp and Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, an internal market report by an industrial park in Vietnam seen by Reuters showed.
Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) was considering building a data center in Vietnam, the Nikkei reported in May.
Alibaba did not reply to a request for comment.
Despite growing demand for digital services from Vietnam’s 100 million population, foreign investors in the sector have largely shunned the country, because of occasional power shortages, less attractive investment incentives and weak Internet infrastructure that relies on a handful of aging subsea cables, industry experts said.
In Southeast Asia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are well ahead in the industry and have attracted far bigger investments from global tech giants.
Google is opening a representative office in Vietnam and is already hiring dozens of engineers, marketing experts and other professionals, ads on LinkedIn showed.
“We now have a team on the ground to better serve our Vietnam-based advertising customers and support the country’s digital transformation,” a spokesperson for Google told Reuters.
Google is also offering 40,000 scholarships in Vietnam for basic artificial intelligence (AI) courses and US$350,000 each for 20 selected AI start-ups, Google Vietnam managing director Marc Woo (胡漢輝) said on LinkedIn last month.
The company already has a large network of suppliers in Vietnam that assemble its products, including Pixel smartphones.
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