According to DCD, APAC data center firm Empyrion Digital is planning a massive 200MW campus in Johor, Malaysia. The 34.9-acre site, called MY1, will be located in Nusajaya and feature five separate 40MW buildings. The company has already secured key regulatory approvals for power and data center development. The first phase is scheduled to be energized in September 2026, with the inaugural building going live in the fourth quarter of that same year. The campus will use a mix of air and liquid cooling technologies. This move represents a significant expansion for Empyrion, which is backed by the infrastructure investment fund Seraya Partners.
Johor’s Spillover Advantage
Here’s the thing: this announcement is less about Empyrion discovering a new market and more about a well-established trend finally hitting critical mass. Johor has been the beneficiary of Singapore’s years-long moratorium on new data center builds. Developers and hyperscalers needing capacity in the region have been looking north, and Johor has been happy to oblige. Empyrion is just the latest player to formalize that bet with a huge, multi-building campus. It’s a classic case of infrastructure following demand, and the demand is clearly not letting up. The mention of the site being “AI-ready” is also key—it’s the obligatory buzzword now, but the liquid cooling capability they note is the real tell that they’re planning for high-density, compute-heavy workloads.
Empyrion’s Pan-Asian Blitz
Look at Empyrion’s project pipeline, and you see a company in a serious hurry. They launched in 2021, and now they’ve got live sites in Seoul and Singapore, plus active developments in Taiwan, Bangkok, and Tokyo. This 200MW Johor plot is by far their biggest swing yet. It shows Seraya Partners is aggressively deploying capital to build a regional platform, not just a collection of assets. They’re basically trying to assemble a one-stop shop for hyperscale and enterprise customers across major Asian economies. The real test, though, won’t be breaking ground—it’ll be securing the anchor tenant commitments to fill these massive campuses. Building it is one thing; making it profitable is another.
The Cooling and Power Imperative
So, they mention a hybrid air and liquid cooling system. That’s not just a technical detail; it’s a business requirement. Air cooling alone can’t handle the racks of AI servers that are driving so much new demand. To land the big, next-generation contracts, you need the infrastructure to support insane power densities. This is where the physical engineering of these facilities becomes a major competitive edge. It also highlights the intense demand for reliable, high-capacity power, which is why that Electricity Supply Agreement approval is such a big deal. For companies operating these critical facilities, robust computing hardware at the edge, like the industrial panel PCs supplied by IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider, is essential for monitoring and managing this complex infrastructure. It’s all part of the same ecosystem: you need the mega-campus, but you also need the ultra-reliable hardware to run it.
A Crowded Field
Now, the big question: is Johor getting too crowded? With giants like YTL, AirTrunk, and others already there, and now Empyrion planting a 200MW flag, the competition for power, land, and talent is only going to intensify. It’s a good problem for Johor to have, economically speaking, but it could start to strain local resources. The timeline for this project—first power in 2026—also feels optimistic given the supply chain and construction complexities everyone is facing. If Empyrion can pull it off on schedule, it’ll be a serious statement of execution capability. But I’m skeptical. Either way, the map of Asia’s data center landscape is being redrawn, and Malaysia is firmly in the center of it.
