What DC Byte’s APAC Data Centre Market Webinar Revealed About Q1 2026

June 8, 2026

The APAC data centre market is not slowing down. In Q1 2026 alone, the region recorded 35.87% of 2025’s total supply growth — and the demand driving it is no longer just local. These were the central themes at DC Byte’s APAC Data Centre Market: Q1 2026 webinar, where James Murphy, Managing Director APAC at DC Byte, and Jingwen Ong, Research Manager APAC at DC Byte, were joined by Scott Bales, Chief Customer Officer, Data Centres at ESR, to examine what’s reshaping the region. Here are the key takeaways.

Australia, Malaysia and India Are Leading APAC’s Supply Expansion

The data tells a clear story about where APAC’s data centre capacity is being built. According to DC Byte’s Market Analytics Platform, Australia has been the dominant market for total IT supply growth across three consecutive years, delivering 8.7 GW of growth in 2024 before settling at 7.3 GW in 2025. Malaysia has accelerated sharply from 2.9 GW in both 2023 and 2024 to 5.0 GW in 2025, cementing its position as APAC’s most dynamic growth market outside Australia. India has followed a similar upward trajectory, rising from 1.9 GW in 2023 to 4.7 GW in 2025. This is not incremental growth. These are structural shifts in where hyperscalers and AI platform operators are committing capacity across the region.

US Customers Are Looking Beyond Their Home Market and Beyond Tier 1

One of the most significant points raised during the session came from Scott Bales: US customers who would never have previously considered building in APAC are now being forced to look beyond their home market. And when they do, they are not stopping at Tier 1 cities.

Capacity constraints in Japan and Australia are already pushing demand toward Melbourne, South Australia, Western Australia, and non-availability zone deployments that were not on most roadmaps two years ago. This is what a structural shift looks like in real time. The investable universe in APAC is expanding geographically, and the competitive dynamics of the region’s data centre market are becoming more complex as a result.

Power Constraints Will Determine the Winners

The most important variable in APAC’s next phase of growth is not demand – it is power availability. Singapore and parts of Australia face tightening grid capacity, and this is already redirecting investment toward markets that can offer headroom: Malaysia, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Malaysia’s rise from 2.9 GW to 5.0 GW in a single year is, in large part, a power access story.

Markets that can offer large, accessible, grid-connected land are absorbing the next wave of hyperscaler commitments. Those that cannot will see announced projects stall at the pre-construction stage, a pattern DC Byte’s research teams have observed consistently across EMEA and the Americas.

Emerging Markets Are Moving from Frontier to Mainstream

Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand recorded the fastest percentage supply growth in 2025. Markets that were, until recently, considered frontier territory by most institutional investors. Regulatory improvements, connectivity upgrades and strong domestic demand signals are driving this shift.

In the next six to twelve months, expect accelerated pre-commitment activity in these markets as operators move to secure capacity before land and power constraints tighten in the same way they already have in Singapore and Tokyo.

The Bottom Line

Q1 2026 makes one thing clear: APAC is moving faster than almost any comparable period in the region’s data centre history. But the speed of announced growth is not the same as deliverable capacity. The markets, operators and investors who will benefit most are those who understand where power is genuinely available, where regulatory environments are moving in the right direction, and where the gap between announced and deliverable projects is narrowest.

Want to hear the full discussion? Watch our APAC webinar here.

If your planning depends on separating announced capacity from deliverable capacity, you need better visibility on data center markets, not bigger bets. Book a demo with our team to explore our Market Analytics, where we capture global data centre capacity by market and development stage.