US Hyperscaler Stack Enters Malaysia with 220MW Johor Campus

The data centre developer’s Johor Bahru project will occupy a 10.8 hectare (26.7 acre) and will include two facilities spanning 1 million square feet (92,903 square metres) when complete. Stack is designing the campus to support artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads and expects to launch its first phase by the fourth quarter of 2026.

With the majority of Stack’s operations located in the United States and Europe, the company’s Johor Bahru campus will have the largest capacity in an Asia Pacific portfolio which the US player began assembling three years ago. The campus will account for almost half of Stack’s 480 megawatts of power in the region once it comes online.

“As part of our continued expansion across APAC, our Johor Bahru campus strengthens our ability to meet clients’ strategic needs in both established and emerging Tier 1 markets, while fostering economic growth within the local community,” said Stack Asia Pacific CEO Preet Gona.

Big Johor Bet
DC Byte senior analyst Vivian Wong told Mingtiandi that Stack’s 220-megawatt facility is aligned with an increasingly competitive Johor market where a number of campuses of over 200 megawatts are planned.

Benefiting from its close proximity to Singapore, along with ample power and water resources, Johor in recent years has attracted major hyperscalers including Microsoft, Equinix and NTT.

Stack APAC CEO Preet Gona

Stack said the first building in its Johor campus will be a 120 megawatt, two-storey facility, complemented by a second 100 megawatt project. Malaysian electric utility Tenaga Nasional Berhad will provide 275 kilovolts of power infrastructure for the Johor campus, supported by an on-site substation, according to the announcement.

Wong, who visited Stack’s development site in Johor on the day the hyperscaler announced its entry into Malaysia, shared with Mingtiandi that the site is currently occupied by a former steel factory which could be retrofitted as the campus’ first building.

“In my opinion, assuming brownfield conversion of the previous steel factory, Stack will potentially be able to stand out on the delivery timeline if they are able to overcome the challenges and restrictions with brownfield conversion to meet customer’s requirements with fit out in existing space,” Wong said. Stack has yet to comment on any potential re-use of existing structures on the site.

Since launching its Asia Pacific arm in October 2021, Stack has expanded to five locations in the region, with Johor Bahru being its sixth. In 2022, the US hyperscaler teamed up with ESR Group to develop data centre campuses in Seoul and Osaka. During the same year, Stack partnered with Oaktree Capital Management for a Tokyo project and has also established presences in Canberra and Melbourne, Australia.

The Melbourne, Tokyo and Seoul projects are now operational, with the Osaka data centre expected to be ready in the second quarter of this year.

BDx Expands in Indonesia
While Malaysia emerged as Southeast Asia’s top data centre hub outside Singapore last year with an annual take-up of 429 megawatts of capacity, Indonesia was next in the region with 93 megawatts of take-up, according to a December report by Knight Frank.

Regional player BDx Data Centres this week announced that it has made a fresh contribution to the digital infrastructure capacity of Southeast Asia’s most populous nation, launching its fifth facility in the country, a 15MW project in southern Jakarta.

In the same announcement, BDx, which describes itself as the largest data centre operator in Indonesia, said it aims to open a dozen additional data centres across the country in the coming years, with a target capacity of 250 MW.

Backed by Miami-based infrastructure investment firm I Squared Capital, BDx in January of last year announced plans for its Jakarta-based unit to acquire a data centre portfolio from its joint venture partner, Indonesian telecommunications provider Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, for IDR 2.63 billion ($170 million). While BDx Indonesia has yet to announce completion of that deal, the Indosat data centres are now listed among its facilities.