Asia Plus: Delay of 166 Data Center Projects Has Short-Term Impact, but GULF-BGRIM Proceed as Planned

The top five US hyperscalers are projecting a combined capital expenditure of $660 billion to $725 billion for 2026, nearly double their 2025 outlays, as the AI build-out shifts from software to physical infrastructure. Microsoft is guiding for roughly $175 billion in adjusted capital expenditure for both FY2026 and FY2027, with two-thirds of quarterly spend going to short-lived assets like CPUs and GPUs and the rest to long-lived data center infrastructure, and it added 1 gigawatt of capacity in Q3 FY2026, doubling its global footprint in two years. Amazon AWS has raised its 2026 capex guidance to approximately $220 billion, with CEO Andy Jassy saying AI capacity is expected to remain constrained through 2027 and contracted demand extending into 2028. Meta saw profit drop 14% in Q2 2026 despite a 28% revenue increase as its build-out, including a 1 gigawatt data center in Ohio and a Louisiana facility that could scale to 5 gigawatts, compressed margins, while Alphabet raised its 2026 capex guidance to as much as $205 billion and its Google Cloud backlog more than doubled year-over-year to $240 billion. The Stargate joint venture involving Oracle, OpenAI and others targets up to $500 billion in infrastructure investment by 2029, and Oracle's FY2026 capex reached $55.7 billion, more than doubling from the previous year.

Suppajee Suthamphan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce, disclosed the outcome of talks with the Ambassador of the Republic of India to Thailand, Puneet Agrawal, that Thailand and India will advance cooperation in a "Co-Creation Co-Investment" format across six potential sectors: herbs and pharmaceuticals, IT, processed food, green industry, automotive, construction, and the hospitality industry, in order to link into global supply chains rather than merely exporting goods to each other's markets. Both sides assigned the start of joint work and progress within 45 days to pilot a model. Most recently, five to six Thai investors have shown interest in cooperating with India under this concept, and the Indian Ambassador reported that Indian companies are preparing to invest in data centers in Thailand, with several already in joint ventures with Thai companies. Both sides agreed to use the JTC platform as a mechanism to monitor cooperation, with India proposing that the JTC meeting draw up a Plan of Action for the services sector. The two sides are in the process of linking India's UPI payment system with Thailand's PromptPay, and are discussing the possibility of using local currencies, the baht and the rupee, to facilitate trade and reduce costs. India is Thailand's seventh-largest trading partner in the world and its number one trading partner in South Asia. Over the seven months from January to July 2026, trade between Thailand and India was worth 13.97456 billion US dollars, expanding 8.07 percent from the same period the previous year, with Thailand exporting 10.27032 billion US dollars to India and importing 3.70424 billion US dollars from India.