Sarath Ratanavadi Bets $4.3B on Thailand’s AI Infrastructure

Gulf Development, Thailand’s largest electricity producer, told investors Thursday it plans to spend $4.3 billion (THB 140 billion) over the next five years expanding its AI data center portfolio from a combined 200 megawatts of current capacity to 2,000, Chief Financial Officer Yupapin Wangviwat said during a video conference. Shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand climbed as much as 5.8% to a record, extending a year-to-date gain that now exceeds 61%.

CEO Sarath Ratanavadi, whose net worth the Bloomberg Billionaires Index places at $18.3 billion, has spent three decades in Thailand’s electricity business. The data center plan extends that business into the facilities that consume the power, putting Gulf in the position of both electricity supplier and computing landlord to the same hyperscaler clients.

Power on Both Sides of the Meter

Gulf Energy Development was founded in 1994 by Sarath in Thailand’s newly privatized electricity market, went public on the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2017, and merged with Intouch Holdings PCL last year to form Gulf Development, a conglomerate now valued at roughly $25 billion. By the end of 2026, Gulf’s total power generation capacity will reach 17,200 megawatts across gas, solar, wind, and battery storage assets in Thailand, Vietnam, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

The data center buildout flows from that energy base. In a market where access to reliable electricity has become the primary constraint for AI infrastructure developers, Gulf controls both the power supply and an expanding slice of the facilities that pull it from the grid. A hyperscaler negotiating a data center lease with Gulf is dealing with the same entity that supplies the electricity the facility runs on.

• $4.3 billion (THB 140 billion): total planned investment in AI data center and infrastructure capacity over five years
• 2,000 megawatts: target data center IT load by the end of the plan period, up from 200 MW today
• 17,200 MW: Gulf’s expected power generation capacity by end of 2026
• $25 billion: combined valuation of Gulf Development after the 2025 merger with Intouch Holdings
• 61%: Gulf’s SET share price gain year-to-date as of June 5, 2026

We see AI and cloud computing as major growth opportunities for our company. Our strong footprint and expertise in the power business give us a significant advantage as we expand into these areas.

Yupapin Wangviwat, Chief Financial Officer at Gulf Development, said this during the video conference with investors on Thursday.

The Data Center Pipeline, Phase by Phase

Committed Capacity Through GSA03

Gulf Development operates its data centers through GSA Data Center Company Limited (GSA), a joint venture formed with Singtel of Singapore and Thai mobile carrier AIS. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) provided GSA a THB 900 million green loan to fund construction of the first facility, a 25.6-megawatt colocation data center in Samut Prakan province designed to Tier III reliability standards and targeting LEED Gold certification for energy efficiency. GSA01 reached commercial operations in 2025 and 2026 is its first full year of recognized revenue.

Two more phases are fully contracted. GSA02, carrying 38 megawatts of IT load, has customer agreements signed and is scheduled to come online in the first quarter of 2027. GSA03, with capacity of up to 100 megawatts, has secured full customer commitments and targets launch by the end of 2027.

The 2,000-Megawatt Target

The three committed facilities get Gulf to roughly 163 megawatts of contracted IT capacity by end-2027. Reaching 2,000 megawatts requires a different order of construction. CFO Yupapin had outlined an interim goal of 1,000 megawatts within three to five years at a February 2026 investor briefing; Thursday’s call doubled that ceiling to 2,000 megawatts over the five-year plan, implying Gulf expects hyperscale campus-scale demand to fill the distance between its contracted facilities and the full target.

Thailand’s Board of Investment (BOI) approved a two-gigawatt Direct Power Purchase Agreement (DPPA) pilot program beginning January 2026, specifically allowing data center operators to procure renewable electricity directly from generators. Gulf can offer that power from its own solar, wind, and battery storage portfolio, shortening the procurement process that international data center developers typically spend years navigating in a new market.

The Hyperscaler Partnership Architecture

Gulf’s most significant tech relationship runs through its subsidiary Gulf Edge, which operates Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) air-gapped services in Thailand, a sovereign cloud arrangement where data is processed domestically without routing through Google’s public infrastructure. In 2026, the two companies expanded that relationship into a Strategic Framework Agreement to jointly study and develop AI infrastructure solutions across the country, including a commercial arrangement for Google Cloud services.

Microsoft’s presence in Thailand has been part of the data center supply equation since its commitment to a domestic campus under the government’s Ignite Thailand digital initiative. That campus, expected to span tens of megawatts, is among the power-demand commitments now factoring into Thailand’s national grid planning.

Singtel and AIS sit inside the JV structure rather than as tenants. Singtel brings hyperscale data center design and operations expertise along with a global cloud-provider client roster. AIS contributes Thailand-specific fiber infrastructure, local enterprise relationships, and network interconnection depth that a foreign-owned operator building from scratch would take years to establish.

Kaohoon International, citing the Thursday investor briefing, also identified Oracle as a technology partner in Gulf’s digital infrastructure program. As described in the Bangkok Post CEO of the Year 2025 recognition Gulf received, Sarath sees data centers as the connective layer between Gulf’s energy, telecommunications, and digital assets rather than a standalone business line.

Thailand’s Infrastructure Race

Thailand’s Board of Investment approved six major projects worth a combined $29 billion (THB 958 billion) in early May 2026, led by TikTok System (Thailand) Co., Ltd.’s data infrastructure expansion, per the BOI’s official announcement. A DAMAC Group subsidiary committed THB 46 billion for a 200-megawatt facility in Chachoengsao. Singapore’s Bridge Data Centres received approval for a 134-megawatt campus in Chonburi.

BOI data shows investment applications from data center and cloud projects jumped 67% in 2025, with roughly $24 billion in project filings submitted to the agency. Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a $5 billion Thailand cloud region in January 2025, opening three availability zones.

Thailand’s data center construction market reached about $940 million in 2026 and is projected by Mordor Intelligence’s Thailand data center construction analysis to hit $1.49 billion by 2031 at a compound annual rate of 9.5%. Data center demand across Southeast Asia is expanding at roughly 20% per year through 2028, according to the US-ASEAN Business Council, driven by AI workloads, sovereign data requirements, and demand spilling out of capacity-constrained Singapore.

Malaysia holds the region’s largest development pipeline at 3.4 gigawatts of proposed capacity, roughly 60% of all Southeast Asian projects, with individual hyperscaler commitments of more than $2 billion each from Microsoft and Google. Singapore operates about 1.5 gigawatts of operational capacity at near-full utilization and has shifted to a stricter sustainability-based approval framework, steering large-capacity demand to neighboring markets. Thailand’s power generation surplus and its position between Vietnam and Malaysia, combined with multiple subsea cable landings, give it connectivity increasingly competitive with Singapore’s on pure latency.

Bonds and Loans Fund the Next Five Years

Gulf Development plans to fund the expansion through operating cash flow, bond issuances, and bank borrowings. The company is in talks with international lenders for dollar-denominated loans of between $400 million and $600 million. It also plans to issue THB 20 billion (about $615 million) in bonds this September.

The balance sheet going into the build is conservative. Gulf carries a net debt-to-equity ratio of 0.91x, far below the 3.5x covenant threshold in its existing loan agreements, leaving meaningful room for additional leverage. Gulf’s shareholders approved a bond issuance ceiling of up to THB 300 billion at an extraordinary general meeting in May 2025, providing a wide authorized shelf for any combination of tranches the company chooses to pursue. In September 2024, Gulf completed a THB 25 billion debenture issuance that was oversubscribed at 1.96 times the offering amount, a precedent the company can point to as it returns to the market.

Total revenue for 2025 came in at THB 135,596 million. Yupapin said the company expects 2026 revenue to grow 10% to 15% versus that base, with most of the incremental lift coming from six domestic solar and battery storage projects adding 695 megawatts of combined capacity during the year.

The Conglomerate Behind the Data Center Plan

The data center expansion is the most visible piece of a broader repositioning. After closing the Intouch Holdings merger in 2025, Gulf Development holds a controlling interest in AIS and a majority stake in Thaicom PCL, Thailand’s primary satellite operator. Earlier in 2026, Gulf acquired a position in Kasikornbank, the country’s third-largest lender; a THB 2.84 billion dividend from that stake is expected in the second quarter.

Gulf entered cryptocurrency in 2024 through a joint venture with Binance, the world’s largest digital asset exchange by trading volume, launching Gulf Binance as a licensed exchange. The company also holds concessions in two intercity motorway projects in central Thailand.

• AIS: Thailand’s largest mobile carrier, acquired through the 2025 Intouch Holdings merger
• Thaicom PCL: Thailand’s primary satellite operator, majority-owned by Gulf
• Kasikornbank: Third-largest Thai lender, Gulf acquired a stake in 2026
• Gulf Binance: Licensed cryptocurrency exchange, joint venture with Binance (2024)
• Gulf Edge: Subsidiary operating Google sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure services
• Motorways: Concessions in Bang Yai-Kanchanaburi and Bang Pa-in-Nakhon Ratchasima routes

In a McKinsey interview published in late 2025, Sarath laid out the conceptual logic: data and cloud centers are, at their core, large electricity consumers, and leasing compute space to them is structurally similar to Gulf’s 30-year history of signing long-term power purchase agreements with industrial clients. The same counterparty relationship, applied to a different product.

Gulf plans to complete the September bond issuance first, raising about THB 20 billion from institutional and high-net-worth investors while the USD loan talks run in parallel. Those proceeds fund a construction program with 163 committed megawatts by end-2027 and an ambition that extends well past this five-year investment window.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Gulf Development shares (SET: GULF) are subject to market risk, and past performance does not indicate future results. All figures are accurate as of publication. Readers should consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.