Robust demand for both colocation and hyperscale data centres will continue to drive strong investor interest in 2026, with more large-scale investment poured into sites that could provide over 100 MW capacity for artificial intelligence, according to a recent CBRE insight note. This momentum is a continuation from a brisk H2 2025 which witnessed many major data center rollouts and commitments announced.
The consultancy also said Asia Pacific will be a key beneficiary of the US$ 400 billion forecast aggregate hyperscaler capital expenditure for 2026 globally. Big tech firms like Google, AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Meta have announced their commitment to scale up AI infrastructure through increasing their GPU deployment.
In contrast with the US where there is talk of an AI investment bubble, CBRE says the boom in Asia is set to continue as demand significantly outstrips land and power availability.
Southeast Asia is poised for further expansion in 2026, with Malaysia at the forefront being an offshoot of Singapore, but also due to its national and economic digitising efforts.
Thailand is also making inroads by rolling out the red carpet for investors. It is making it easier to build new data centers by improving access to power and land, as well as making significant investment in subsea cable infrastructure.
Singapore will continue to remain a premium hub for specialised AI workloads with the addition of two new tranches of data centre development capacity totalling 1.2 GW.
Worth mentioning also are Neoclouds, a new class of purpose-built cloud provider and data centres for AI and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads built to meet surging demand for GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS).
CBRE sees capital recycling emerging as a key theme as owners and operators dispose of assets – potentially in the form of sale leasebacks – to generate necessary funds. Purchasers in such cases will likely be soft equity in the form of pension and institutional money.
In conclusion, while land availability, power supply, construction costs and, increasingly, water scarcity, will remain a challenge, the strong fundamentals in the industry will continue to provide attractive opportunities for investors.
