The first AI data centre campus in Southeast Asia takes shape in Johor

Racks Central today held an event in Johor to mark a milestone in its upcoming 510MW AI data centre campus.

I was invited to its Pasir Gudang data centre this morning. To my knowledge, this is the first AI data centre campus in Southeast Asia.

A 510MW AI data centre campus

Racks Central was founded in 2014 with a modest 12MW data centre in Singapore. It is now building a 510MW AI campus in Pasir Gudang, deliberately sited away from the other data centre clusters in Johor.

It is hard to imagine a colocation operator making a foray to build such a massive campus, much less an advanced AI one. But Racks Central is playing for keeps. It recently hired Suppan Saravanamuthu, a well-regarded industry veteran who joined from Iron Mountain to serve as its COO, per his announcement three weeks ago.

First 70MW fully committed

In his opening speech, Racks Central CEO Bobby Wee noted that Phase A of 70MW capacity is already fully committed. Phase B, with 120MW, is also fully pre-booked.

Attendees were given a site tour of Phase A, which is expected to be ready for service by Q1 2027. I wasn't allowed to take photos, but I could see the structure of the first two levels erected, and step inside.

A few details stood out about the first phase. It is a three-storey data centre, it will exclusively feature Blackwell GPUs, and it is designed for full direct-to-chip cooling. Notably, the campus will draw water from a nearby reservoir with water treatment done in-house. This means no burdening of municipal water treatment facilities.

Designed for GreenRE Platinum

During the visit, I was told that the team is designing the campus for GreenRE Platinum. GreenRE is an independent framework created by REHDA, the association of real estate and housing developers, for Malaysian buildings and data centres.

It draws from the global green-building certification movement, including Singapore's PostsIMDA-BCA Green Mark for Data Centres. However, it has its own data centre rating tool and score tiers. In some sense GreenRE is stricter, because it adds explicit prerequisite and performance gates, and proof is required.

Built for what comes next

Nvidia's upcoming Vera Rubin will require today's data centres to be completely redesigned, given its call for DC power, warm-water cooling, and extreme density.

And according to Bobby, upcoming phases will support it, all the way to the 600kW Rubin Ultra. That is a big claim for a site still rising out of the ground in Pasir Gudang. I'll be very interested to see it implemented right next door.