Google is set to build a large data centre in Vietnam in what would be the first such investment by a large US tech company in the South East Asian nation, according to sources.
A proposed ‘hyperscale’ data centre is being considered close to Ho Chi Minh City with the tech giant in talks to ready the centre for 2027.
This comes after Google‘s plans to build a data centre outside of Dublin were rejected by an Irish Council.
The latest move by Google into Vietnam is believed to be motivated by the large number of domestic and foreign cloud services clients in Vietnam and the country’s expanding digital economy.
Although Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing markets for digital platforms such as Google’s YouTube, it has previously struggled to attract major overseas capital in data centres due to its patchy infrastructure.
Foreign investors in the sector have largely shunned the country because of occasional power shortages, less attractive investment incentives and weak internet infrastructure that relies on a handful of ageing subsea cables.
A hyperscale data centre with a power consumption capacity of 50MW could cost between $300m and $65m with the large centres usually consuming as much power as a big city.
The top data centre operators in Vietnam, based on computing space, are industrial investment firm IDC Becamex and telecommunications company VNPT, both Vietnamese state-owned enterprises.
There are strict cybersecurity rules in Vietnam and the nation has long clashed with foreign tech companies about storing data in the country, a requirement that it has not regularly enforced.
Google, however, is opening a representative office in Vietnam, and is already recruiting for dozens of engineers, marketing experts and other professionals.
“We now have a team on the ground to better serve our Vietnam-based advertising customers and support the country’s digital transformation,” a spokesperson for Google told Reuters.
