Singapore’s CapitaLand Investment (CLI) said it will invest more than $700 million to develop its first data centre in Osaka, Japan, expanding its global portfolio of digital infrastructure assets.
The Singapore-based real estate asset manager has secured 50 megawatts of power capacity for the project, which is expected to be AI-ready and designed with sustainability features that meet international green building standards.
CLI manages a global real estate portfolio that includes 27 data centres across Asia and Europe with a combined capacity of about 800 MW.
The company said the new Osaka facility would strengthen its position in the Asia-Pacific region, where major cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle already have a presence.
“The acquisition is not only aligned with CLI’s digitalisation investment theme but also enhances CLI’s geographical spread, deepening its presence in Japan, one of CLI’s focus markets,” said Manohar Khiatani, senior executive director of CLI.
Khiatani added that Japan’s data centre market is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 10% to $38.7 billion by 2028, underscoring the investment’s potential.
Michelle Lee, managing director for Private Funds (Data Centre) at CLI, indicated that with the swift uptake of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) globally, particularly in Asia, data centre demand is likely to experience double-digit growth and surpass new supply.
“There is strong institutional interest in data centre investments, with 97% of investors planning to increase their overall investment in data centres,” Lee said.
The Osaka data centre will be AI-ready and built with sustainability at its core, following the requirements of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or an equivalent Japanese green certification standard.
According to the announcement, it will incorporate advanced cooling systems and adopt best practices in temperature management to optimise energy and water usage efficiency.
In addition, the facility will use products with zero ozone depletion potential or a global warming potential (GWP) below 100 to minimise its environmental impact.
CapitaLand Group has data centre investments across nine countries such as Singapore, Japan, South Korea, India, China, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
