Recently, Vietnam has rapidly emerged as an emerging hotspot for the construction of artificial intelligence data centers in the ASEAN region, attracting domestic and foreign companies to invest billions of dollars in projects. A series of major investments from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang are driving Vietnam into a period of explosive data center construction.

Beijing North City Development Corporation (KBC), together with Accelerated Infrastructure Capital Group (AIC) and VietinBank, has signed a cooperation agreement to build a data park with a scale of up to 1.2 billion US dollars in the Xinfuzhong Industrial Zone of Ho Chi Minh City. The project has a designed capacity of 200 megawatts of IT load and is equipped with approximately 10000 GPU systems, further consolidating Vietnam's position in regional AI infrastructure. Previously, a data center worth approximately $2 billion jointly invested by UAE G42, US Microsoft, Vietnam FPT, VinaCapital, and Vietnam Victory has also settled in Ho Chi Minh City.

Since the beginning of this year, the construction of data centers in Vietnam has continued to heat up. In April, Viettel started construction of a data center with a capacity of 140 megawatts in the Xinfuzhong Industrial Zone; In August, the company launched the construction of the Anqing data center with a total investment of 17.5 trillion Vietnamese dong. At the same time, a joint venture between Vietnam's VNG company and Global Data Centers under Japan's NTT Group has also launched two data center projects in Ho Chi Minh City, expected to be put into operation in 2026. In addition, IPTP Networks has invested $200 million in the construction of an AI data center in the Da Nang High tech Park, further expanding its data footprint in Vietnam.

According to Deloitte's prediction, by 2035, the size of Vietnam's artificial intelligence market is expected to reach $65 billion, of which $25 billion will come from the field of artificial intelligence data centers. The report from the Vietnam Data Center and Cloud Computing Club also shows that the size of the Vietnamese cloud computing market is expected to be 1.24 billion US dollars by 2025 and will grow to 2.5 billion US dollars by 2029; The capacity of data centers will soar from 525 megawatts in 2025 to 1000 megawatts in 2030.

Deng Songshan, Vice President of Strategic Economics at CMC, pointed out that Vietnam has significant cost advantages in the ASEAN region, with data center investment and operating costs of approximately 6-7 million US dollars per megawatt, which is 40% to 60% lower than Singapore. In addition, Vietnam's continuously improving data legal system, superior strategic location, good infrastructure interconnection, as well as the rapid development of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, financial technology, and e-commerce, have jointly driven the rapid growth of data demand.

However, in order to continue attracting high-quality investment, Vietnam still needs to focus on breaking through multiple bottlenecks, including ensuring stable power supply, simplifying project approval processes, expanding international transmission bandwidth, accelerating the cultivation of high-quality talents, and enhancing resilience to climate change.

Overall, Vietnam is rapidly rising in the field of AI data centers with multiple advantages, and is expected to become an important part of ASEAN and even the global digital infrastructure layout in the future. With the continuous optimization of policy environment and the continuous release of market demand, Vietnam's development prospects in the era of artificial intelligence are worth looking forward to. Editor/Xu Shengpeng