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Singapore's Aolani Signs LOI for 500MW Malaysia Data Center Capacity, Total Commitment Reaches 580MW

By: IDCNOVARegion: Southeast Asia
Singaporean neocloud startup Aolani has signed a Letter of Intent to secure 500MW of data center capacity in Malaysia, a move that significantly expands the company's footprint in one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing digital infrastructure markets and underscores the rising demand for AI-ready computing capacity in the region.

The capacity is expected to begin coming online in the second half of 2027 and will be distributed across multiple sites within the country. Aolani did not disclose the identity of the data center operator with which the agreement was reached. According to the company, all facilities are designed to Tier III standards and will be engineered to support AI factories and GPU deployment. Aolani will own the AI infrastructure and assume responsibility for the deployment and operation of the data centers once they are live.

The 500MW commitment builds on existing capacity agreements totaling 80MW, bringing Aolani's total secured capacity to 580MW. The Letter of Intent remains subject to further negotiation and execution between the parties involved.

Nicholas Chia, CEO of Aolani, framed the expansion as a strategic imperative for the company. "Malaysia is a vital strategic anchor for Aolani and a proven home market where we continue to grow our footprint as a hyperlocal neocloud," he said. "Malaysia is already firmly established as a global hub for AI infrastructure, but the next stage is using local compute to catalyse development of the local AI ecosystem and the broader economy. We are committed to steering this effort, using this capacity expansion to work with local partners across the ecosystem to further democratise access to compute."

The announcement comes as Malaysia cements its position as a regional data center powerhouse, with major hubs concentrated in Cyberjaya, Johor, and Kuala Lumpur. The country has attracted substantial investment from hyperscalers and neocloud providers alike, drawn by favorable land availability, competitive energy costs, and supportive government policies aimed at building a domestic AI infrastructure base.

Aolani, founded in 2023, has been steadily assembling a portfolio of AI infrastructure partnerships across Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, the company is collaborating with YCO Cloud on an Nvidia GB300 NVL72 deployment and has signed agreements with Rafay and FriendliAI to bring AI cloud infrastructure online. In September, Aolani revealed it was working with Nvidia to deploy 22,000 GPUs across its AI factories in Malaysia and the Philippines, targeting a total of more than 48,000 GPUs, with Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra GPUs among those slated for deployment.

The scale of Aolani's capacity commitment reflects the broader acceleration of AI-driven data center demand across Southeast Asia, where neocloud providers are racing to secure power and real estate to support GPU-intensive workloads. For Malaysia, the deal reinforces its ambition to move beyond being a passive hosting location toward becoming an active participant in the local AI value chain, a shift that could generate downstream economic benefits as compute access broadens.