If data is the new gold, Thailand is having a gold rush. The Kingdom approved another $2.7 billion worth of investments in data centers from foreign and domestic firms adding more building blocks to the nation’s digital architecture.

The investment from Thai, Singaporean and Chinese firms “comes as American cloud firms, including Google, Amazon and Microsoft, are looking to grow their footprint in Thailand and the wider region,” wrote the CCN website, which reports on business finance and technology.

All those American firms and others have invested in building or expanding data centers and cloud technology and systems in the Kingdom during the last three years, citing the enormous prospects for Thailand’s digital future.

The Kingdom’s political leaders have helped seal those deals by actively courting big technology firms worldwide to invest and build in Thailand. Aside from the revenues and jobs that such investment creates, policymakers see data centers as essential to driving the Kingdom’s adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in business and fueling the nation’s digital transition.

To draw those firms to Thailand, the government is committed to expanding the Kingdom’s digital infrastructure. The Board of Investment has been providing incentives to achieve that, including tax breaks, land ownership rights, and import duty exemptions to encourage investment.

Among Thailand’s other advantages, according to CCN, are that its central location in Southeast Asia enables low-latency access to emerging markets in Vietnam and Malaysia.
“With multiple submarine cables landing on its coast, Thailand competes with Singapore in terms of digital connectivity. And as regional cloud demand grows, data center builders are looking for new opportunities beyond the established Singapore hub,” the website said.