Digital Realty Malaysia launches in Cyberjaya and has Johor in its sights

• Digital Realty Malaysia has launched its Cyberjaya campus, targeting 32MW across three sites by mid-2028
• The company confirmed it is evaluating locations in Johor as part of a broader national connectivity play

Five months after announcing its entry into the Malaysian market, Digital Realty has formally launched operations in Cyberjaya and is already scoping its next move south. The NYSE-listed data centre operator inaugurated its Malaysia platform on June 8, with Minister of Digital Gobind Singh Deo, senior officials from MIDA and MDEC, and Digital Realty’s Asia Pacific leadership in attendance.

The launch brings together two operational facilities and a future development site, all within roughly 500 metres of each other in Cyberjaya, with a combined target of approximately 32 megawatts (MW) of IT capacity. In a post-event interview, Serene Nah, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific at Digital Realty, confirmed the company is actively evaluating sites in Johor, a detail absent from official press materials.

“We’re looking at other growth opportunities locally, and also in Johor,” she said. The disclosure signals an ambition to build a connected corridor stretching from Cyberjaya down through Johor to Singapore, where Digital Realty already operates.

What Digital Realty Malaysia is actually building

The Cyberjaya campus spans three assets. KUL10, formerly TelcoHub 1 and acquired from CSF Advisers, is a carrier-dense 1.5MW facility hosting more than 40 network service providers, with access to three internet exchanges — MyIX (Malaysia’s national IX), NETIX, and DE-CIX — the kind of connectivity infrastructure that makes a data centre a genuine traffic hub rather than just a building with servers.

Its role on campus is specific: a carrier hotel prioritising interconnection density over raw compute. KUL11, 500 metres away at Jalan Teknokrat 8, is the AI-facing asset. The purpose-built, six-storey facility brings 15MW of capacity designed for AI and high-performance computing workloads. A third site, a 1.6-acre land parcel adjacent to KUL10, adds a further 14MW, targeted for completion in mid-2028, designed for hybrid colocation.

All three facilities will carry independent fibre entry points rather than relying on a shared connection. “Every facility will have its own dedicated fibre. We make it diverse for every facility,” said Billy Lee, Chairman of CSF Advisers and now Advisor for Malaysia at Digital Realty. “But the three sites will also be interconnected with dedicated fibre, operating three as one.”

All former CSF Advisers staff have transitioned to Digital Realty employment, with headcount expected to grow as the campus scales.

The private AI pitch

At 32MW, Digital Realty Malaysia sits well below the gigawatt-scale footprints being developed by hyperscalers elsewhere in the region. Nah was direct about why that comparison misses the point.

“2026 is the year of inference,” she said. “AI training needs have almost reached the maximum level. What customers now need is the ability to use that data, and inference doesn’t require high power densities. It requires latency sensitivity, carrier reach, and multi-cloud connectivity.”

Among the customer profiles Digital Realty is targeting is the enterprise running its own private AI environment. For example, a financial institution that has trained a model on proprietary data and wants to run inference and agentic workloads within its own cage, connected to multiple clouds and carriers, without routing sensitive data through a hyperscaler’s shared infrastructure.

“That’s what we service,” Nah said. “We help them with the data architecture, we help them create their own cage, we help them connect to various clouds — our facilities are always multi-cloud.”

Digital Realty has been running an innovation lab in Ashburn, Virginia, since late 2024, where enterprise customers trial liquid-cooled, high-density AI infrastructure before committing to deployment. The model has since expanded to Japan, and Nah indicated Malaysia is on the same path.

On sustainability and ServiceFabric

Digital Realty’s global sustainability metrics are established: a 93% renewable energy coverage rate across its portfolio, a global PUE of 1.38, and a WUE of 0.59 as of 2025. KUL10 and KUL11 are not yet within the 185 facilities matched to 100% renewable energy, a candid acknowledgement from Nah, given that the campus only came under Digital Realty’s ownership this year.

“We’re working on bringing forth the renewable energy solution,” she said. Technologies already deployed in Singapore, including water desalination and closed water loops, are being assessed for Malaysia, alongside solar storage options.

ServiceFabric, Digital Realty’s software-defined interconnection platform that links 700+ data centres globally, is planned for Malaysia in the second half of 2026, subject to licensing approvals. Once live, Malaysian customers will be able to connect to Digital Realty’s global network, including key regional hubs in Singapore and Jakarta, through a single fabric.

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