Amazon.com will invest billions of dollars in Taiwan over the next 15 years to build data centers, the latest global technology company to expand its footprint in Asia to meet the region's growing demand for cloud services.
Amazon Web Services, the Seattle-based tech giant's cloud-computing arm, said late Tuesday that it will launch an AWS infrastructure region in Taiwan by early 2025 and invest billions of dollars "as part of its long-term commitment."
The new infrastructure will enable customers to store data securely and run workloads with low latency from data centers located in Taiwan, it said.
AWS, which provides computing, storage and other services from data centers around the world, has been accelerating cloud-infrastructure spending globally, as Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy has reoriented the company to focus on artificial-intelligence innovations and to catch up with Microsoft, Google and others in the space.
AWS is Amazon's most profitable unit, with first-quarter results showing the segment's bottom line rose 17% from a year earlier to $25 billion. Amazon said the quarter's capital expenditure of $14 billion would be the low point for the year as it ramps up spending on AWS infrastructure and generative AI investment.
Taiwan has positioned itself as the center of the global AI race, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.making advanced chips to run AI software.
Since the start of 2024, AWS has disclosed plans to spend $9 billion to expand its cloud services in Singapore, $15 billion to build cloud capacity in Japan and more than $5 billion each in Mexico and Saudi Arabia in the coming years.
Last year, AWS said it planned to spend almost $13 billion by 2030 to expand its data-center infrastructure in India, the world's most populous nation.
Meanwhile, Microsoft in May disclosed investment plans for Southeast Asia, while Google plans to invest $2 billion to establish its first data center in Malaysia to power cloud services.
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