Ooredoo backs Indonesia AI compute venture with $800 million, targets 1 GW

Ooredoo is committing about $800 million to launch and initially develop Zankore, an AI compute and neocloud platform being built with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, Nokia and Nvidia, as the Qatari telecoms provider pushes deeper into digital infrastructure. Ooredoo said it will be the founding shareholder and lead investor with a 49% stake. Zankore will be developed first in Indonesia before expanding across Southeast Asia, targeting 1 gigawatt of NVIDIA DSX AI Factory capacity. The platform is expected to deliver about 200 megawatts of AI capacity in the first half of 2027 and use NVIDIA DSX MaxLPS technology, which Ooredoo said can raise computing output by up to 40% within the same power budget. The company said the initial investment is expected to contribute about $600 million in cumulative EBITDA over the first five years. The move positions Ooredoo as an early entrant in Southeast Asia's fast-growing AI infrastructure market, at a time when Gulf investors are stepping up spending on AI and data centers. Separately, Bloomberg News reported that Abu Dhabi's Mubadala is weighing a $6.3 billion AI data center investment in Japan, while Nikkei said Japanese and U.S. companies, potentially alongside investors from the UAE and elsewhere, could invest about 2 trillion yen, or $12.67 billion, in what would be Japan's largest AI data center.