Gulf Energy Development Plc and its partners plan to spend an additional 10 billion baht to double their outlay on a data centre facility in Bang Phli district of Samut Prakan.
The expansion will increase the centre’s energy consumption to 50 megawatts from a previously announced 25 megawatts, with completion expected in March next year, chief financial officer Yupapin Wangviwat told reporters on Thursday.
The move signals a push by Gulf’s billionaire founder and CEO Sarath Ratanavadi, the country's second-richest person, into data centres to tap a booming market fuelled by rising demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Gulf has been expanding its empire into virtual banking, cryptocurrency trading and other technology businesses as electricity generation has excess capacity. Demand for data centres is rising in the region, with global tech companies spending billions of dollars to spur cloud computing and AI services.
“We set the expansion of the second phase now because we expect a surge in demand for our data centre services,” Mr Sarath said at the press conference in Bangkok. “A jump in AI adoption and cloud computing will substantially increase demand for our data centre bandwidth.”
Technology and other non-power businesses are expected to contribute a “significant proportion” of Gulf Energy’s revenue in the near future, said Mr Sarath, declining to elaborate.
Earlier this week, Gulf Energy and Google held a joint briefing about their cloud computing partnership in Thailand.
Mr Sarath has a net worth of $9.1 billion, making him Thailand’s richest person after property tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
