PRINCETON Digital Group secured a US$280 million green loan to help finance a US$1.5 billion data centre it’s building in southern Malaysia, a first for the Asian infrastructure operator as it aims to get that complex operational by June.
The Warburg Pincus-backed company, which builds and operates server facilities around the region, secured the financing from Maybank, Standard Chartered and United Overseas Bank. Princeton Digital said the deal marked its first so-called green loan, a form of debt targeted at environmentally friendly projects.
From Microsoft to KKR & Co, tech firms and financiers are bankrolling data centres across Asia to support an accelerating boom in artificial intelligence (AI) development and services. They are needed to support an estimated 25 per cent annual increase in demand for the infrastructure that underpins cloud services and generative AI. This month, Microsoft pledged to invest US$2.2 billion in Malaysia.
Singapore-based Princeton Digital has said it’s aiming to borrow US$1 billion to finance several projects. Founded in 2017, the company develops and operates facilities in China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan. Warburg Pincus invested in and helped set up the company.
In 2022, Princeton Digital raised more than US$500 million in a funding round led by Abu Dhabi sovereign investor Mubadala Investment, joined by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. And in May 2023, it agreed to buy land in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor to build that 150-megawatt hyperscale data centre, its first in the country.
The Johor Bahru region – connected by a causeway to Singapore – is emerging as one of Asia’s rising AI data centre hotspots. Nvidia last year teamed up with local utility YTL Power International to build a US$4.3 billion AI data centre park in the area. BLOOMBERG
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