The two facilities, to be built in Johor, southern Malaysia, will have a combined capacity of 280 megawatts and raise AirTrunk’s total investment in the country to 27 billion ringgit across four data centers, with more than 700 megawatts of total capacity, according to Forbes.

"Malaysia has set a clear ambition to lead in AI," Khuda, founder and CEO of AirTrunk, said in a statement. "We’re investing in that vision for the long term, both within Johor and across the country in time."

Australian billionaire Robin Khuda, founder of data center operator AirTrunk. Photo courtesy of AirTrunk

Singapore was long Southeast Asia’s main data center hub, but the city-state paused new developments between 2019 and 2022 over concerns about energy use, water consumption, and land constraints.

That pause, combined with surging interest in artificial intelligence following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, drove a wave of new data center projects across Malaysia and increasingly in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, according to Malaysian newspaper Business Today.

Malaysia’s data center market is projected to grow to more than $11 billion by 2031 from about $6 billion in 2025, according to a January report by Research and Markets.

Founded in 2015 by Bangladesh-born Khuda, AirTrunk has become one of the largest data center operators in the Asia-Pacific region, with a major presence in Australia and Japan.

Its Malaysian expansion follows the company’s proposed acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra, which has 600 megawatts of data center projects in India and development potential of up to $5 billion.

Khuda is among Australia’s richest people, with an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion as of April 5, according to Forbes.