TikTok parent company ByteDance is reportedly looking to open a new data center in Thailand.
The Bangkok Post (via w.media) reports that the company’s BytePlus subsidiary is looking to open a new site to support cloud and AI services.
It quotes a source familiar with the company’s plans, who said ByteDance wants to take advantage of Thailand’s growing digital economy. The data center could open as soon as next year, the report said.
ByteDance has been building out its data center infrastructure in recent years, both to meet growing demand, and to try to assuage regional governmental concerns about data being sent to China, where it is based.
In June the company revealed it was opening an AI hub in Malaysia at a cost of RM10 billion ($2.13bn).
It is also reportedly considering whether to set up a data center in Australia to support workloads across the Asia Pacific region.
Thailand itself is attracting increasing levels of digital infrastructure. In September, Google said it would invest $1 billion in data centers in capital city Bangkok and the nearby coastal province of Chonburi, creating 14,000 jobs in the process.
As part of the project, Google will work with Gulf Edge to create a sovereign cloud offering in Thailand.
AWS plans to launch a cloud region in Thailand in early 2025, and invest $5 billion by 2037, while Microsoft also plans to build a data center region in the country.
