Investment Forum | APAC 2027

Join industry leader Craig Scroggie as he sits down to discuss APAC's investment, M&A and market strategy outlook.

• How does the current state of the data center industry compare to previous growth periods and historical global infrastructure buildouts like the railroads or the early internet age?
• How is NEXTDC balancing capital allocation between dominating the Australian market and scaling into new Asian regions while managing the risks of entering these competitive landscapes?
• What criteria does NEXTDC use to evaluate the risk and reliability of new, less established players in the cloud and AI market when forming partnerships?
• How is the company evolving its facility engineering and energy strategies to manage the thermodynamic challenges of high-density AI workloads while maintaining its carbon-neutral operational standards?

APAC projects are expanding at a rate that would have been unimaginable just 5 years ago. Unprecedented demand for massively sized campuses has led to some markets, such as Singapore, reaching a breaking point. Now, as operators and investors continue to look for the next big opportunity, operators need to raise more capital than ever before whilst putting in more risk for their projects. This panel asks whether key players can strategise on a future template from the lessons learnt from these larger markets? How can a playbook be used as emerging markets become more significant players in the region?

• How are operators and investors moving from single-asset loans to massive-scale capital structures across APAC? How is financing being navigated?
• With land and water bottlenecks increasingly affecting growth opportunities, how are leading operators and investors future proofing their assets?
• Examining how gigascale developers are now being forced to become their own power utilities, and how on-site generation will lead the future of datacenter growth
• As primary hubs continue to become constrained across the region, which cities or countries are operators and investors looking at scaling, and how? What regulatory environments are most suitable to gigawatt size investment projects?

In order to facilitate data center expansion throughout the APAC region, financing strategies, as well as strategic M&A activities, must evolve. Local banks are becoming unable to support the size of the AI infrastructure projects needed, as well as the risks associated with them, leading many operators to look elsewhere. Private equity continues to dominate with significant players being injected with significant capital for expansion, such as AirTrunk and PDG. Looking ahead at the significant growth coming, how will the region evolve?

• What will be the next set of capital providers and structures for the APAC region?
• How are power solutions and on-site generation fitting into APAC investment strategies?
• How are valuations changing for APAC portfolios? How are investment leaders pricing risk as we move into the inference stage of AI?
• Are we set to see an M&A race for power secured portfolios, and how are investors thinking about strategic exits?