Description
The Singapore data centre landscape has changed significantly over the last several years. The build moratorium implemented in 2020 put a pause on data centre development activity. In early 2022, the moratorium was lifted, but only a relatively small chunk of capacity has been permitted for development and will be undertaken by a small group of providers. The end result of the Singaporean government’s evaluation of the data centre sector was a fundamental reshaping of the market. Going forward, the infrastructure built in Singapore will be more strategic, geared around connectivity, edge and AI workloads, while being aligned closely with sustainability considerations and benefits for the Singaporean economy.
With the new regulations in place, Singapore has essentially peaked as a data centre colocation market as infrastructure is starting to move into nearby overflow markets such as Johor Bahru in Malaysia and Batam in Indonesia. And this migration is starting to accelerate as emerging AI demand is quickly gravitating to Johor Bahru and the next wave of core-hyperscale regions serving Singapore look for expansion capacity with significant runway. Despite the conditions, the Singaporean data centre market is still growing as operators optimise their portfolios and make use of existing space to maximise inventory. According to the data presented in this report, the Singapore data centre market was worth almost $2.6b USD in 2023 and is projected to grow at a five-year CAGR of 11% going forward. The value of the market is expected to reach almost $3.3b in 2024. In terms of market size, current built-out capacity will reach close to 717MW in 2024 and grow to 795MW by the end of 2025.
The shifts in the landscape increasingly favour global data centre operators and hyperscalers that have the scale and resources to meaningfully impact the Singaporean economy, while meeting sustainability and compliance requirements. This will result in increased hyperscale self-build activity, while operators without a global footprint or interconnection story will need to look at alternatives as the AirTrunk-ByteDance consortium demonstrates.
This report is an excellent resource for any service provider, investor or enterprise end user looking to understand and project the data centre market in Singapore or find a service provider. The methodology applied continues to be the most robust in the industry. We track supply on a space and power basis, split all the metrics along retail and hyperscale lines (which have now been further divided into more granular categories), and aggregate inventory in multiple tiers according to build status, absorption rates and maximum capacity levels. Hyperscale cloud nodes and on-ramps are mapped and a complete directory is provided. A new addition to our DCI report series is tracking of hyperscale self-builds.
