Digital Edge to Invest $4.5 Billion in Indonesia’s Largest AI-Ready Data Center Campus

Asia Daily
13 Min Read

A Landmark Investment in Southeast Asian Digital Infrastructure

Singapore-based Digital Edge has announced a transformational commitment to Indonesia’s digital future, unveiling plans to invest US$4.5 billion in constructing one of the nation’s largest artificial intelligence-ready data center campuses. The CGK Campus, situated in the GIIC Industrial Estate in Bekasi on the eastern periphery of Jakarta, represents the single largest infrastructure investment in the company’s history and signals a major acceleration in Southeast Asia’s digital infrastructure development.

The facility will deliver 500 megawatts of information technology capacity upon full completion, with architectural provisions allowing expansion to one gigawatt. This scale positions the campus among the most substantial hyperscale facilities in the Asia-Pacific region, designed specifically to accommodate the intensive computational demands of generative artificial intelligence, machine learning workloads, and enterprise cloud services.

Digital Edge, which operates as a portfolio company of New York-based alternative asset manager Stonepeak Partners, has established itself as a significant player in Asian digital infrastructure since its founding in August 2020. The company currently maintains operations across nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region, with more than 1.4 gigawatts of secured IT power either in service or under various stages of development and construction.

John Freeman, chief executive officer of Digital Edge, described the announcement as a defining moment for the organization’s regional strategy. This investment arrives as Indonesia experiences rapid growth in digital service adoption, creating substantial demand for local data processing capacity that domestic infrastructure has struggled to match.

The announcement reflects broader trends in global data center development, where investment capital increasingly flows toward markets offering large populations, growing digital economies, and strategic geographic positioning for regional connectivity. Indonesia, with over 270 million residents and rising internet penetration, presents compelling fundamentals for infrastructure investors despite challenges related to power grid stability and regulatory complexity. The project also highlights the growing competition among Southeast Asian nations to establish themselves as primary hubs for digital infrastructure, with Indonesia leveraging its market size and strategic location to attract substantial foreign direct investment in technology infrastructure.

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Engineering for the AI Era: Technical Specifications

The CGK Campus distinguishes itself through specifications optimized for advanced computing workloads. At the heart of its design philosophy sits a target Power Usage Effectiveness ratio of 1.25, a metric that measures data center energy efficiency by comparing total facility power consumption against power used specifically for computing equipment. A PUE approaching 1.0 represents theoretical perfect efficiency, making 1.25 an ambitious target for a facility of this scale in tropical climates.

To achieve these efficiency benchmarks, the campus will implement direct-to-chip liquid cooling systems, a technology that circulates coolant directly to processors rather than cooling entire server rooms. This approach dramatically reduces energy consumption compared to traditional air conditioning while supporting the high thermal densities characteristic of artificial intelligence training hardware. The facility will also incorporate recycled water systems and renewable energy integration, addressing sustainability concerns that increasingly influence hyperscale customer site selection.

The carrier neutral design ensures that multiple telecommunications providers and internet exchange operators can interconnect within the facility, preventing vendor lock-in and providing customers with diverse connectivity options. This architectural approach has become standard for hyperscale campuses serving global cloud providers and multinational enterprises requiring redundant network paths.

Stephanus Oscar, chief executive officer of Digital Edge Indonesia, emphasized that the facility addresses a critical supply imbalance in the domestic market. Indonesia’s digital economy has expanded at rates exceeding infrastructure deployment capabilities, creating bottlenecks that constrain business growth and digital service quality.

Indonesia’s digital economy is expanding faster than infrastructure can keep up. The CGK Campus bridges that gap with 500MW of sustainable, carrier-neutral capacity built for hyperscale and AI deployments. With AI shaping the future of enterprise and cloud services, Digital Edge is at the forefront of this transformation.

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Strategic Location and Network Integration

The selection of the GIIC Industrial Estate in Bekasi reflects careful consideration of geographic, geological, and network topology factors. Located approximately 40 kilometers from Digital Edge’s existing EDGE1 and EDGE2 facilities in central Jakarta, and less than 15 kilometers from other major data center clusters, the campus occupies a position that balances accessibility with expansion space availability.

This proximity to existing infrastructure creates opportunities for low-latency connectivity to Jakarta’s primary business districts while anchoring a broader national digital ecosystem. The location in Bekasi, part of West Java province, sits on the eastern border of the capital region, providing access to the Jakarta metropolitan area’s economic activity without the land constraints and real estate costs associated with downtown construction.

Connectivity to the campus will be provided through Indonet, Digital Edge’s wholly owned Indonesian telecommunications subsidiary. The company has engineered dedicated fiber routes to the GIIC campus using entirely underground construction methods, a design choice that enhances physical security and disaster resilience compared to aerial cable deployments that remain vulnerable to weather events, vehicle accidents, and intentional damage.

The underground fiber deployment represents a significant capital investment compared to conventional aerial installations, reflecting Digital Edge’s emphasis on operational continuity for mission-critical workloads. This infrastructure decision aligns with international standards for Tier III and Tier IV data center classifications, which require redundant connectivity paths and physical route diversity to minimize single points of failure.

Andy Rigoli, chief executive officer of Indonet, explained the technical advantages of this underground approach.

Our new routes to the GIIC campus are built 100% underground, a design that significantly enhances reliability and resilience compared to traditional deployments. Combined with industry-leading equipment and advanced monitoring, this integration enables Digital Edge to deliver carrier-neutral solutions that meet the highest standards for hyperscale and enterprise customers.

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Phased Construction and Service Timeline

Development of the CGK Campus will proceed through multiple construction phases to align capacity delivery with market demand absorption. The initial phase comprises three dedicated data center buildings, with staggered completion dates designed to provide incremental capacity without creating excessive immediate supply.

The first building is scheduled to enter service during the fourth quarter of 2026, offering initial capacity for early anchor tenants. The second building will follow approximately three months later, targeting the first quarter of 2027, with the third building completing the initial phase in the second quarter of 2027. This phased approach allows Digital Edge to refine operational procedures and incorporate technological advances between construction stages while generating revenue from initial deployments to support subsequent development.

The construction schedule aligns with projected demand curves from major cloud service providers and enterprise customers currently evaluating Indonesian market entry. By staging deliveries across eighteen months, Digital Edge can adapt subsequent building specifications based on operational learnings from initial deployments and evolving customer requirements for power density and cooling configurations. This flexible approach mitigates the risk of overbuilding ahead of actual demand while ensuring sufficient capacity remains available to capture market opportunities as they materialize. The phased strategy also allows the company to optimize capital deployment, matching construction expenditures against confirmed customer commitments and pre-leasing agreements that typically precede hyperscale facility openings.

While Digital Edge has not disclosed specific capacity allocations for each building, industry standards for hyperscale facilities suggest individual structures likely range between 15 and 30 megawatts, depending on power density configurations and cooling architectures. The full 500-megawatt build-out will require additional phases beyond the initial three buildings, potentially extending the development timeline through the late 2020s or early 2030s depending on customer commitment rates.

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Capital Structure and Regional Expansion Strategy

The $4.5 billion Indonesia commitment forms part of a broader capital deployment strategy supported by substantial recent financing activities. In early January 2025, Digital Edge announced the completion of a $1.6 billion capital raise comprising approximately $640 million in equity and $1 billion in debt facilities. The equity portion attracted significant oversubscription, drawing participation from major institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds seeking exposure to Asia-Pacific digital infrastructure growth.

The equity oversubscription indicates strong institutional appetite for digital infrastructure assets in emerging Asian markets, particularly those positioned to serve artificial intelligence workloads. Stonepeak’s continued support through board representation and strategic guidance provides Digital Edge with access to additional capital markets expertise and operational best practices from other portfolio companies within the infrastructure firm’s global network.

Andrew Thomas, chairman of Digital Edge and senior managing director at Stonepeak, noted that investor enthusiasm reflects confidence in the company’s execution capabilities.

The level of interest received from existing and new investors is testament to Digital Edge’s proven track record, expansion capacity, and relentless focus on delivering for our customers across the Asia Pacific region. Since making the founding investment in Digital Edge in 2020, Stonepeak has been proud to support the platform’s expansion into six countries and a truly pan-APAC footprint.

Beyond Indonesia, Digital Edge maintains active development pipelines across multiple Asian markets. In October 2024, the company opened SEL2, a 36-megawatt facility representing the first building in a 100-megawatt campus in Incheon, South Korea. The company anticipates opening its first facility in a 300-megawatt Navi Mumbai campus in India during the second quarter of 2025, alongside TY07, a hyperscale edge facility in downtown Tokyo that will serve as the company’s ninth Japanese data center.

In Southeast Asia, Digital Edge has established a joint venture with Thai energy firm B Grimm Power to develop a $1 billion portfolio of hyperscale and artificial intelligence-ready campuses across Thailand, including a 100-megawatt facility in Chonburi province east of Bangkok that broke ground in September 2024. The company also secured a $325 million corporate facility from PT Bank Central Asia in late 2024 to support Indonesian expansion and refinance existing obligations. The BCA facility, denominated in Indonesian rupiah equivalent to $325 million, provides local currency funding that mitigates foreign exchange risk for domestic construction costs and operational expenses. This financing structure demonstrates the growing sophistication of Indonesian banking institutions in evaluating technology infrastructure collateral and cash flow profiles.

Samuel Lee, who served as chief executive officer of Digital Edge during the initial capital raise period, described the financing as validation of the company’s strategic positioning.

This is a major milestone for Digital Edge and an affirmation of the quality of this platform and our team. We are very proud of what we have achieved and are excited to deliver on the next phase of AI-ready data center developments.

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Indonesia’s Digital Transformation Imperative

The CGK Campus arrives at a critical juncture for Indonesia’s technological development. As Southeast Asia’s largest economy by gross domestic product, Indonesia has witnessed explosive growth in digital service adoption across e-commerce, financial technology, streaming media, and enterprise software. This expansion has created demand for local data processing capacity that outstrips available supply, particularly for workloads requiring low-latency access to end users in the archipelago nation.

Current infrastructure limitations force many Indonesian businesses to rely on data centers located in Singapore or other regional hubs, introducing latency penalties and data sovereignty complications. The new campus addresses these constraints by providing substantial domestic capacity designed to international standards for reliability and security.

The facility’s artificial intelligence readiness carries particular significance as Indonesian enterprises and government agencies explore machine learning applications for everything from agricultural optimization to urban traffic management. Specific artificial intelligence applications driving demand include large language models trained on Indonesian linguistic datasets, computer vision systems for automated manufacturing quality control, and predictive analytics platforms for the country’s extensive agricultural sector. These workloads require specialized graphics processing unit clusters that generate substantially higher heat densities than traditional central processing unit-based servers, necessitating the advanced liquid cooling infrastructure specified for the CGK Campus.

Training and running large artificial intelligence models requires specialized infrastructure with enhanced power densities and cooling capabilities that legacy data centers often cannot accommodate. Digital Edge faces competition from other regional operators including Princeton Digital Group, AirTrunk, and local Indonesian conglomerates expanding into data center development. However, the scale of the CGK Campus investment establishes a significant barrier to entry for smaller competitors while positioning Digital Edge as a preferred partner for hyperscale customers requiring substantial contiguous power allocations exceeding 100 megawatts.

The campus is expected to serve diverse customer segments including international cloud providers seeking local presence requirements, Indonesian financial institutions requiring disaster recovery capabilities, and multinational corporations establishing regional headquarters in Jakarta. Government initiatives supporting digital economy development, including regulations requiring data localization for certain financial and personal information categories, provide additional demand drivers for domestic capacity expansion. This broad addressable market supports the phased development approach by reducing dependence on any single customer type or industry vertical.

John Freeman emphasized that the investment represents a long-term commitment to Indonesia’s digital ecosystem.

The CGK Campus is a pivotal milestone in our APAC strategy and our largest infrastructure investment to date. This landmark investment will enable us to drive the next decade of innovation, cloud adoption, and digital services across Indonesia and the broader region.

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The Essentials

  • Digital Edge will invest US$4.5 billion (approximately SGD 5.68 billion) to build the CGK Campus in Bekasi, Indonesia, representing the company’s largest infrastructure commitment to date.
  • The facility will deliver 500 megawatts of IT capacity at full development, with architectural scalability to one gigawatt, making it one of Indonesia’s largest artificial intelligence-ready hyperscale data center campuses.
  • Phase one includes three buildings with the first scheduled for service in Q4 2026, followed by completions in Q1 2027 and Q2 2027.
  • The campus targets a market-leading Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.25, utilizing direct-to-chip liquid cooling, recycled water systems, and renewable energy integration.
  • Indonet, Digital Edge’s wholly owned Indonesian telecommunications subsidiary, will provide connectivity through 100% underground fiber routes to enhance reliability and resilience.
  • The investment follows a $1.6 billion capital raise completed in January 2025, comprising $640 million in equity and $1 billion in debt financing.
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