Amazon’s AWS to double down on Singapore with additional $9 billion cloud investment

SINGAPORE — Amazon Web Services on Tuesday said it will invest an additional 12 billion Singapore dollars (about $8.87 billion) over the next five years to grow its cloud infrastructure and services in Singapore.

“The investment will go into the construction and build up of the DC capabilities, all associating with the Asia-Pacific Singapore region,” Priscilla Chong, country manager of AWS Singapore, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday.

The U.S. tech giant’s cloud computing arm launched its first Asia-Pacific region in Singapore in 2010 – its first foray outside of the U.S. and Europe. Since then, AWS said it has pumped over SG$11 billion into 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 Tuesday summit.

Chong added that the firm has trained over 400,000 people in Singapore in cloud skills since 2017 and will “continue to invest in upskilling and improve productivity” across the country.

The AI boom has led to a surge in demand for cloud computing services and data centers, as training AI models requires huge 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 compute and storage, as well as advanced capabilities like AI and generative AI,” Tan Kiat How, senior minister of state at Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information, said during the event.

Tan said AWS will also help more organizations in Singapore adopt cloud services and AI capabilities as the region continues to see “strong momentum on digitalization.”

Tan also noted while the outlook for the digital economy remains positive, there are just “not enough tech professionals” in Singapore or even globally.

AWS was the world’s largest cloud infrastructure provider in the first quarter, according to data from Synergy Research Group. AWS held a 31% share of the global cloud infrastructure market in the first quarter, down from 32% a year earlier. Microsoft Azure followed behind AWS in the second spot.

Just last week, Microsoft said it will make AI- and cloud-related investments in several Southeast Asian countries – Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia – as it doubles down on the region.

Amazon Web Services has also expanded its footprint in Southeast Asia over the last few years.

It laid out plans in October 2022 to launch a region in Thailand with a $5 billion investment over 15 years and in March last year said it will commit at least $6 billion by 2037 into a new region in Malaysia. AWS had opened a region in Jakarta in December 2021.