Racks Central Marks Construction Milestone for 510 MW AI Data Center Campus in Johor
PASIR GUDANG, Malaysia — Singapore-headquartered data center developer and operator Racks Central marked a construction milestone on June 29, 2026, for what it describes as Southeast Asia's first AI factory campus, located at its RCJM campus in Pasir Gudang, Johor. The milestone ceremony brought together strategic investors, local authorities, project partners, and financing partners involved in the development of the 510 MW campus.
Phase A of the campus — the 70 MW RCJM1 facility — is now fully committed ahead of its targeted ready-for-service date in Q1 2027, according to the company. The campus is situated within Iskandar Halal Park in Pasir Gudang and is purpose-built for high-density AI workloads.
Strategic Investors and Development Scale
Strategic investors ESR Group and CAF II were present at the June 29 milestone ceremony alongside local authorities and financing partners. ESR is identified in the announcement as a strategic investor; further details on the financial structure of the investment were not disclosed in the source materials.
The campus is planned to comprise four large-scale AI data center facilities with a combined capacity of up to 510 MW. RCJM1, the first phase, offers 70 MW of IT load and is targeted for ready-for-service in Q1 2027. Details on the capacity breakdown and timelines of subsequent phases were not disclosed in the source materials.
Racks Central's SIJORI Digital Corridor Strategy
The Johor campus forms a key part of Racks Central's broader strategy to establish what the company calls a seamless AI data center corridor spanning Singapore, Johor, and Batam — a region referred to as the SIJORI corridor. Racks Central currently operates a Tier III colocation data center in Singapore serving enterprise and cloud customers.
Bobby Wee, Founder and CEO of Racks Central, said: "We're not building another data center in Johor. We're building a campus of AI factories, purpose-designed for AI workloads. For years, Southeast Asia had to go elsewhere for world-class compute, and the economic value went with it. We want to keep that value here this time, along with the jobs, the skills and the local ecosystem they enable."
Infrastructure Design and Demand Drivers
The RCJM campus is engineered for high-density GPU environments, incorporating advanced liquid cooling systems and high-density power distribution. Successive phases of the campus are configured for the latest AI processors. The campus is marketed to hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and enterprises requiring scalable, high-performance AI compute capacity.
Racks Central noted that AI-driven compute demand is projected to rise far faster than traditional computing through the end of the decade. The company said the strong take-up of RCJM1 ahead of its ready-for-service date reflects accelerating regional demand for purpose-built, high-density AI data center infrastructure across Southeast Asia.
Workforce and Community Partnerships
Alongside the construction milestone, Racks Central announced a talent-development collaboration with Politeknik Ibrahim Sultan, a Malaysian polytechnic institution, aimed at building a skilled local workforce for the campus and the broader data center ecosystem in Johor. The partnership was formalized at the June 29 Strategic Partnership and Milestone Ceremony held on-site at the Pasir Gudang campus.
Racks Central was established in 2014 and is headquartered in Singapore. The company describes its development pipeline as exceeding 500 MW across the SIJORI corridor, with the Johor campus representing the largest single node in that pipeline.