Hong Kong's data centre pipeline is now twice the size of Singapore's
A government-led revival with AI capacity at its heart.
The Hong Kong government is pushing hard for digital infrastructure, and the pipeline for new data centres is at least twice that of Singapore's.
It's been a while since I last looked at Hong Kong's data centre market. And aggressive new growth appears to be happening there.
Hong Kong data centre hub
At one point, Hong Kong was neck-and-neck with Singapore as the leading data centre hub in the region. I recall how frequently analysts compared the two markets back then.
In fact, Singapore's move to develop a data centre park, now Tanjong Kling, came in the wake of Hong Kong launching the Tseung Kwan O (TKO) data centre park initiative back in 2005.
However, Hong Kong's land crunch soon throttled growth from 2017. Today, Hong Kong has around 687MW of data centre capacity while Singapore has 1.4GW.
Eye on data centres
That gap has not gone unnoticed. Hong Kong has made major recent moves to allocate land and capital for large-scale data centre construction, notably through the government-led Sandy Ridge Data Facility Cluster in the Northern Metropolis.
The push for data centres is multi-pronged. It combines incentives, land supply, and encouragement of AI-focused partnerships, backed by a Data Centre Facilitation Unit set up to offer support. That's not all. The government is also pushing the conversion of ageing industrial facilities into modern AI-enabled data centres.
Push for AI
The initiatives are slowly taking shape at Sandy Ridge, following a formal open tender in 2025 and the awarding of land in March earlier this year.
The Digital Policy Office is explicit about what Sandy Ridge is for. It names three purposes: providing computing power to develop the AI industry, promoting scientific breakthroughs, and driving the widespread application of AI.
Indeed, land allocation decisions are apparently tied explicitly to AI capacity targets. Clearly, Hong Kong is shifting from its earlier caution towards a full AI push. The question now is whether that ambition can close the gap it let open, and how Singapore responds.
