Saigon Asset Management and industrial property developer Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park ( VSIP Group ) have kicked off a partnership that will build a 150-megawatt data centre near Ho Chi Minh City.

Poised to cover up to 50 hectares inside the VSIP 3 Industrial Park in Binh Duong province in southern Vietnam, the new project, the SAM Digital Hub, which is envisaged as a data centre campus, will require an estimated investment of US$1.5 billion, says Vietnamese-American Louis Nguyen, founder and CEO of Saigon Asset Management, an American private equity firm better known as SAM.

“The three key obstacles that have deterred our hyperscaler clients from entering Vietnam have been licensing, land and power,” Nguyen says. “By partnering with VSIP, we have successfully addressed these challenges, paving the way for the launch of our SAM Digital Hub.”

Globally, hyperscalers are large-scale data centres designed to deliver massive computing power and storage capacity.

Over the past two years, PMX, a stakeholder in the project, has delivered or played key roles in delivering, Nguyen adds, three other projects in Malaysia totalling nearly 125 megawatts ( MW ) of IT load.

PMX is currently engaged in the delivery of two additional hyperscale projects exceeding 100MW IT load, further reinforcing its experience, operational know-how and customer engagement capabilities with both American and Chinese hyperscaler end-users.

“These strengths,” SAM’s Nguyen boasts, “provide the foundation needed to ensure SAM Digital Hub becomes a premier, high-performance data centre destination for both local and international clients.”

Colin Phua, PMX’s managing director, shares: “The SAM team has assembled the ideal trifecta of investor, landowner and data centre developer to make this initiative a reality.”

SAM has launched a US$300 million Vietnam Data Centre Fund, with the first closing expected by this year’s fourth quarter. It aims to fuel SAM’s digital infrastructure projects and attract a diverse range of international investors.

As the project in Binh Duong province, which borders Ho Chi Minh City, would require up to US$1.5 billion in investment, international investors are needed.

The 1,000-hectare-plus VSIP 3 Industrial Park, which will house the SAM data centre, is also home to Danish toymaker Lego Group’s 44-hectare manufacturing site. The major facility is currently under test run and Lego plans to inaugurate it later this year.

VSIP Group is now involved in the development of 18 integrated townships and industrial parks across Vietnam with a total land area of almost 11,700 hectares.

SAM, which is headquartered in Vietnam’s economic powerhouse of Ho Chi Minh City, is also a merger and acquisition firm, not just a private equity company. Its focus spans artificial intelligence security, data centres, media, healthcare and education, and its clients include some of the largest corporations in Vietnam, such as Vingroup, PetroVietnam, Viettel and Masan.