Thailand's Board of Investment approved $29bn in foreign investments, with TikTok's $25bn data-centre expansion as the headline item. Three of six approved projects are data centres, accounting for 93% of the total. ByteDance's new commitment dwarfs its prior $8.8bn Thailand pledge and spans Bangkok, Samut Prakan, and Chachoengsao provinces. The build-out is partly driven by Singapore's capacity constraints, Malaysia's power limitations, and ByteDance's strategy to access Nvidia GPUs outside US export-control reach. Thailand's BCG tax incentives, diplomatic neutrality, and fast BOI approval velocity have positioned it as Southeast Asia's emerging hyperscale data-centre hub, alongside investments from AWS, Google, and UAE-based DAMAC Group. Risks include grid capacity limits, potential US secondary sanctions, and execution challenges at unprecedented scale.
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