On June 18th, Huang Wei, chairman and CEO of GDS Holdings, said in a speech at the 'China Zhisuan Ecological Development Conference - 2024 AIDC Tech Day' that 'the impact of AI may far exceed the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the fate of human beings, and the data center industry is also being reshaped by it.'

The debut of ChatGPT was once likened to the 'iPhone moment' of artificial intelligence, and the generative AI is rapidly evolving from a simple chatting tool to an application and service with actual economic value. Huang Renxun, CEO of NVIDIA, once admitted that 'Datacenter is the new unit of computing,' the positioning and importance of data centers in the AI era can be seen, and the ubiquity of interconnect computing resources will become even more 'scarce.'

Huang Wei said: 'GDS Holdings is well-prepared for this. By promoting both domestic and international 'dual-engine' strategies, we have gradually formed a comprehensive layout covering the world's core economic hubs, meeting the needs of low-latency and close to energy supply; at the same time, we have continuously sharpened our core competitiveness around larger resource capacity, faster delivery capability, stronger operational management capability, greener energy use capability, and more forward-looking product capability to fully meet the wide-ranging needs of the AI era.'

First, AI value is emerging rapidly, and ubiquitous interconnect computing power is in great demand.

From a global perspective, AI is causing a 'huge change' in the data center industry.

Combining GDS Holdings' practical experience overseas and on-the-spot visits to multiple data center hub regions around the world, we see the following changes:

1. From supply exceeding demand to supply falling short of demand. The price of computing resources has soared, and in some regions, it has become difficult to find a single cabinet.

2. Scale and delivery speed are improving. The volume of overseas customer orders has increased from tens of megawatts to the level of hundreds of megawatts, and there are also higher demands for delivery speed, which need to match business development speed.

3. Low latency and sufficient low-cost energy are trends. The selection of data center locations is synchronously focusing on first-tier economic developed areas and regions with more abundant and cheaper energy resources to satisfy customer requirements for low latency, low-cost, and high reliability.

4. Emerging hub regions are accelerating their formation. The Southeast Asian region centred on SIJORI (Singapore-Malaysia Johor State-Indonesia Batam Island) has become one of the core interconnect computing nodes in the world. In addition, regions such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, Southern Europe, Northern Europe, and North Africa are also accelerating the construction of their digital hubs.

Second, strengthen the leading advantage and fully meet the needs of the AI era.

AI has brought challenges to the data center industry while also creating enormous opportunities for reshaping the industry structure. GDS Holdings has been deeply involved in the industry for more than 20 years, and now regards becoming a 'world-class player in the AI era' as the company's new development goal, and has made sufficient preparations for this purpose.

1. Larger resource capability.

Adhering to the domestic and international 'dual-engine' strategy, GDS Holdings has gradually completed larger and more mature resource layouts in recent years both domestically and internationally.

In China, the company has formed a layout covering four major regions, such as Jing-Jin-Ji, the CNI Yangtze Index, the South China Greater Bay Area Concept, and the Southwest Chengdu-Chongqing region, with a total capacity of over 1.5 GW and nearly 2,000 MW of reserve resources, covering various economically developed areas throughout the country and meeting the diversified needs of customers for low and medium latency as well as low-cost energy supplies.

In overseas markets, the company has covered nearly 1.2 GW of total capacity in Southeast Asia centred on SIJORI, and has established resources that meet the demands of future AI computing. With the project launch of the company's first data center in Tokyo, Japan, GDS Holdings will gradually move from Asia to a broader world stage, providing global computing support to customers.

2. Faster delivery capability.

All new data center projects built by GDS Holdings in Southeast Asia currently adopt a prefabricated construction method to achieve overall delivery efficiency.

As an example, the Nusajaya Technology Park, Iskandar (Phase 1, including NTP1/2/3) located in Johor, Malaysia, took 14 months to construct and deliver for NTP1, a 30% shortened construction period, while NTP2 and NTP3 each took only 12 months and 10 months, respectively, setting new industry records.

3. Stronger operational management capability.

As the value of GPU increases, enterprises have higher requirements for security and data center management when deploying.

GDS Holdings has accumulated more than 20 years of professional experience in data center operation and management. Currently, through the extensive application of AI and intelligent technology, the company continuously improves operation and management quality and efficiency, ensuring the safety of customer assets and data running 24/7.

4. More forward-looking product capabilities.

GDS Holdings' data center architecture design and civil layout capabilities closely follow the latest iteration direction of equipment such as chips and servers.

In the data center in Johor, Malaysia, the company has deployed numerous cutting-edge products and solutions with a forward-looking concept, which can meet the deployment and performance requirements of customers' next-generation applications and adapt to demand changes in the next 10 to 20 years.

5. More green energy usage capabilities.

By 2022, the proportion of renewable energy used by GDS Holdings has reached 35.9%. The company continues to improve the green attributes of data centers, invests heavily in the large-scale deployment of liquid cooling technology, and explores new energy sources such as hydrogen to provide customers with more sufficient low-carbon energy support.

As the AI trend is sweeping through, GDS Holdings always takes customer needs as its guide, continuously improves resource layout, hones product capabilities, upgrades data center solutions and services, and promotes sustainable development of enterprises in the new era. At the same time, GDS Holdings also looks forward to building a more perfect ecosystem with partners to embrace the future of the smart computing industry together.