Google announced on Monday that it will invest 36 billion Thai baht, or approximately $1 billion, to establish a new data center and expand cloud infrastructure in Thailand.
This investment represents a significant ramp-up of Google’s operations in Asia and underscores the company’s commitment to integrating artificial intelligence into its global strategy.
This was disclosed by Google in the podcast on its Thailand blog Monday, stating the investment would lead to the creation of the company’s first data center in the country, according to CNBC.
Google also confirmed that its inaugural data center in Thailand will be situated in Chonburi, an eastern province.
Google’s Thailand country lead, Jackie Wang said “The facility will help support the growing demand for Google Cloud and AI innovations, as well as popular Google services such as Google Search, Google Maps and Google Workspace in Thailand.”
Beyond developing infrastructure, the $1 billion investment from Google into Thailand is “also about unlocking new opportunities for businesses, educators and all Thais,” Wang said in the blog post.
“As AI transforms industries, it is more important than ever to educate and upskill Thais to use this technology,” she added.
Thailand’s digital economy is the second-largest in Southeast Asia and is expected to reach $50 billion by 2025, Google, Temasek and Bain & Company said in a 2023 report by e-Conomy SEA.
Google is intensifying its investments in the region, prioritizing artificial intelligence as it navigates competitive pressures from rival tech giants in both AI and cloud computing.
Google maintains a dominant position globally in search engine technology. However, it faces growing threats from the rise of generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, prompting the company to adapt its strategies to remain competitive in the evolving tech landscape.
Google played a pivotal role in pioneering the technology behind generative AI through its early research on transformer models, which form the foundation of many popular generative AI applications.
However, Google now faces competition from generative AI products like ChatGPT and Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, which users are increasingly turning to for information.
