Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Tuesday that it will invest an additional 12 billion Singapore dollars (about $8.87 billion) over the next five years to expand its cloud infrastructure and services in Singapore.
“The investment will be used to build and expand data center capabilities in the Asia-Pacific Singapore region,” said Priscilla Chong, AWS Singapore’s country manager, in an interview with CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday.
AWS, the cloud computing arm of the U.S. tech giant, launched its first Asia-Pacific region in Singapore back in 2010, marking its first move outside of the U.S. and Europe. Since then, AWS has invested over SG$ 11 billion in Singapore’s cloud infrastructure and ecosystem.
“Starting with our investment in Singapore in 2010, AWS has continued to strengthen their commitment to the ASEAN region, sharing the uplift [in] digital skills across the nations, providing secure and resilient infrastructure consistently across the region,” Chong said during a summit on Tuesday.
Chong also mentioned that the company has trained over 400,000 people in Singapore in cloud skills since 2017 and plans to “continue to invest in upskilling and improving productivity” across the country.
The rise in demand for cloud computing services and data centers due to the AI boom has been significant. Training AI models require large amounts of data, and the cloud provides access to vast data sets.
“Cloud service providers like AWS play an important role in improving the digital economy ecosystem. Besides being a foundational digital infrastructure for organizations, cloud service providers enable enterprises to easily access digital resources like computing and storage, as well as advanced capabilities like AI and generative AI,” said Tan Kiat How, senior minister of state at Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information, during the event.
Tan mentioned that AWS will help more organizations in Singapore adopt cloud services and AI capabilities as the region continues to see “strong momentum on digitalization.”
However, Tan noted that while the outlook for the digital economy is positive, there is a shortage of tech professionals in Singapore and globally.
AWS held the top position as the world’s largest cloud infrastructure provider in the first quarter, according to data from Synergy Research Group, with a 31% share of the global cloud infrastructure market. Microsoft Azure followed behind AWS in the second spot.
Just last week, Microsoft announced plans to make AI- and cloud-related investments in several Southeast Asian countries – Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia – as it focuses more on the region.
Amazon Web Services has also expanded its presence in Southeast Asia over the last few years. In October 2022, it revealed plans to launch a region in Thailand with a $5 billion investment over 15 years, and in March last year, it committed at least $6 billion by 2037 into a new region in Malaysia. AWS had also opened a region in Jakarta in December 2021.
