A glowing Google logo appears inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland.
Arnd Wegmann | Reuters
Google It announced on Monday that it would invest 36 billion baht ($1 billion) in Thailand to create new data centers and expand the country's cloud infrastructure.
The move marks an acceleration of Google's expansion in Asia, putting artificial intelligence at the heart of its internationalization drive as it faces fierce competition from companies such as Google. Microsoft and OpenAI.
Google posted on its Thailand blog on Monday that the investment will allow the company to build its first data center in Thailand.
Data centers are the backbone of today's modern digital economy, driving the rise of cloud computing technology and enabling people to access storage, computing and analysis services through the Internet.
Google said its first Thailand data center will be located in the eastern Thai province of Chonburi.
Google Thailand country head Jackie Wang said in a blog post that the facility will “help support Thailand's growing appetite for Google Cloud and artificial intelligence innovation, as well as popular Google services such as Google Search, Google Maps and Google Workspace.” Demand,” according to an English translation obtained via Google Translate.
Wang said in the blog post that in addition to developing infrastructure, Google's $1 billion investment in Thailand “is also about unlocking new opportunities for businesses, educators and all Thais.”
“As artificial intelligence transforms industries, it is more important than ever to educate Thais and improve their skills in using this technology,” she added.
Google, Temasek and Bain & Company stated in e-Conomy SEA's 2023 report that Thailand's digital economy is the second largest in Southeast Asia and is expected to reach US$50 billion by 2025.
Google's investments in the region are focused on artificial intelligence as it faces pressure from rival tech giants in artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
The internet giant currently dominates the world in search engine technology. But the company is increasingly threatened by the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
It's a technology Google helped pioneer through its early research on so-called transformer models, which are the cornerstone of many of the most popular generative artificial intelligence models.
Today, however, Google finds itself threatened by the use of generative AI products, such as ChatGPT and the AI-powered search engine Perplexity, to find information about things.
Last week, Google filed an antitrust lawsuit with the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the cloud industry to undermine competition.