Google plans to invest $1 billion in Thailand to construct a data center and speed up AI development.

• On Monday, Google announced that it will invest 36 billion Thai baht ($1 billion) in Thailand to construct a new data center and enhance its cloud infrastructure.
• Google is intensifying its growth in Asia by prioritizing artificial intelligence as the driving force behind its global expansion, amidst increasing competition from Microsoft and OpenAI.
• The digital economy of Thailand is predicted to reach $50 billion by 2025, making it the second-largest in Southeast Asia, according to a 2023 report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company.

On Monday, it was announced that the company is investing 36 billion Thai baht ($1 billion) in Thailand for the establishment of a new data center and the enhancement of the country's cloud infrastructure.

Google's expansion in Asia is being accelerated by a move that places artificial intelligence at the center of its international strategy, as it competes intensely with companies like Microsoft and OpenAI.

Google announced on its Thailand blog Monday that it would establish its first data center in the country with the investment.

Cloud computing technology is made possible by data centers, which serve as the foundation of the digital economy by providing access to storage, compute, and analytics services over the internet.

Google announced that its first data center in Thailand will be situated in Chonburi, an eastern province of the country.

Google Cloud and AI innovations, as well as popular Google services such as Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Workspace, will receive support from the facility in Thailand, according to Jackie Wang, Google's Thailand country lead, in a blog post.

The $1 billion investment from Google in Thailand is not only about building infrastructure but also opening up new business, education, and personal growth opportunities for everyone in the country, according to Wang's blog post.

It is crucial to educate and upskill Thais to use AI technology as it transforms industries.

The digital economy of Thailand is the second-largest in Southeast Asia and is projected to reach $50 billion by 2025, according to a 2023 report by e-Conomy SEA, which was authored by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company.

Google is concentrating its investments in the region with a particular emphasis on AI technology, as it competes with its major tech rivals in the areas of AI and cloud computing.

While the internet giant currently reigns supreme in global search engine technology, it is facing growing competition from generative AI tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Google played a key role in the development of a technology through its early research on transformer models, which form the basis of many popular generative AI models.

Google is facing a threat from AI-powered search engines and generative AI products, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, which can find information about various topics.

Microsoft was accused by Google of abusing its dominant position in the cloud industry and undermining competition last week when Google filed an antitrust lawsuit with the European Commission.