DayOne and AirTrunk put Singapore in the data centre spotlight
New funding and major India commitment mark pathway to listings on SGX
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Data centres sound boring, but they’re important, incredibly lucrative and tapping into Singapore’s public markets. Today, we look at how DayOne and AirTrunk announced massive deals with a view to tapping Singapore for capital.
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Data centre players announce major deals with eyes on Singapore listings
Two data centre players with public market goals in Singapore announced massive deals to gear up for potential listings after DayOne raised a further $2.5 billion and AirTrunk, a major player based in Australia, committed $30 billion to growth in India.
We profiled DayOne recently, and it is the international offshoot from China’s top data centre business, GDS International. The company announced its $4.5 billion Series C round closed on Friday. That’s a deal that looks like its last venture capital funding injection before it goes public through a strongly-rumoured IPO.
That’s a huge sum but it’s not all new money. The round was first announced in January as $2 billion so the company has more than doubled it by adding a further $2.5 billion. That comes from new backers that include the Indonesia Investment Authority, which has potential synergies in the future, and Achi Capital Partners, a China-based fund that claims to focus on late -stage semiconductor and tech deals and buyouts.
The money is going towards expansion, as you’d expect, with “key” markets Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Finland and Spain all namechecked in the announcement. DayOne said it has secured more than 1.5 GW of total bookings since it was spun out in 2022.
DayOne looks primed to go public with PE firms Coatue and Hillhouse established as its largest shareholders following this round, SoftBank’s Vision Fund is another backer and it has accrued nearly $6.5 billion in investor capital to date. Clearly this is the size of investment and calibre of backers that will want to cash in on the AI boom by taking the company public. GDS International is already listed in Hong Kong and the Nasdaq. Speculation suggests DayOne is taking a similar path by exploring a Singapore-US listing, taking advantage of new rules that enable simultaneous SGX-Nasdaq floats.
In another major piece of news from last week, a rival data centre player backed by big names in private equity announced its own deal worth billions. Sydney-headquartered AirTrunk said it will invest $30 billion in India by 2030, signaling a doubling down into the market.
Already, 11-year-old AirTrunk has a local presence in India courtesy of its acquisition of domestic data centre operator Lumina CloudInfra in April. Now it is upping its original commitment of $5 billion in investments and 600 MW portfolio of planned capacity with this new pledge.
The company’s backers include Blackstone and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which has over $500 billion in AUM. The two are part of a consortium that acquired the business in a 2024 deal that valued it at $17 billion. There’s plenty of overlap with DayOne, as AirTrunk’s business spans Southeast Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Middle East and India.
Like DayOne, AirTrunk is looking to tap Singapore for liquidity albeit through a REIT IPO that could raise $1.5 billion, according to reports. That would mean selective assets are open to investment, unlike DayOne which would offer ownership in its full business.
Neither company’s plans have been confirmed, but the reports show Singapore as an ideal option for data centre firms wanting to tap public markets.
Korea is the world’s first AI economy
Korea might become the world’s first AI economy. It already is when you consider its KOSPI public market index is dominated by Samsung and SK Hynix’s incredible run as AI stocks. But now things got more official with the nomination of an experienced tech operator as the country’s new prime minister.
Han Seong-sook, a former CEO of tech giant Naver, is moving from her role leading the SME and startup ministry after President Lee Jae Myung proposed her for PM. Han made her name as Naver’s CEO for five years during which she focused on payments and acquisitions, including the $600 million purchase of Wattpad in 2021.
Her candidacy, which could see her become Korea’s first female PM for nearly 20 years, is being linked directly to Korea’s surge as its companies and economy reap the benefits of the AI boom.
It’s not all plain sailing, however. Just this morning, the KOSPI plunged 8% in response to tension around the Middle East and speculation around a US interest rate hike. That triggered a circuit breaker, barely one week after hitting new records. Japan’s Topix, which hit all-time highs at the end of last month, fell sharply, too.
The rollercoaster ride highlights the position Korea, and other countries in Asia, find themselves in as the supplier of key technologies to AI kingpins like Nvidia. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Seoul last week, following a trip to Taiwan for key tech show Computex, where he met with the who’s who of tech and announced that SK Hynix and Samsung were clear to supply much-needed high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia’s next-generation platform.
The duo, and US rival Micron, may be greenlit but it was SK Hynix that closed first with a partnership that covers the co-development of AI memory chips, and building out AI data centres.
Unsurprisingly, the economy is rocketing, as data in the Financial Times illustrates:
South Korea is emerging as one of the biggest winners of the AI boom and global rearmament wave, with demand for its chips, ships and tanks driving the economy to 3.6 per cent growth in the first quarter, up from 1.6 per cent in the fourth quarter. Exports surged 38 per cent to a record $220bn
But now it’s anyone’s guess how the public market will perform.
Deals & Markets
Seed-stage startup funding in Japan fell 42% last year to 19.9 billion yen ($124 million), its lowest level in a decade [Nikkei Asia]
Foxconn hit record earnings for 2025 and raised its dividends to a new high [Digitimes]
Chips:
A research team claimed Huawei’s Ascend 910C chips have been used to post-train the DeepSeek-V4-Pro model, in what is a major validation for China’s self-sufficiency push [South China Morning Post]
China launched its first prefabricated computing power hub in Qingdao, Shandong province. It claims facilities can be built in just five months, and with overall costs reduced by 20% [Bloomberg]
In other news:
Korean police are investigating local users of Polymarket over alleged illegal gambling [Bloomberg]
China’s securities regulator tightened oversight of the country’s private fund industry, raising registration requirements, cracking down on illegal activity, and pushing capital toward tech-focused venture investments [Reuters]
Indonesia arrested former government officials in a corruption case related to a multi-billion dollar programme to provide free school meals [AP News]
US semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials plans to expand its Southeast Asia workforce by 25% this year, adding at least 1,000 workers primarily in Singapore [Nikkei Asia]
Thailand’s consumer watchdog plans to sue Meta for allegedly allowing scammers to defraud Facebook users through ads and failing to protect consumers [Reuters]
The US Trade Representative opened a trade investigation into Vietnam over its failure to curb online piracy [Torrent Freak]
SE Asia is going to need a lot more electrons for all of these data centres