In 2025, companies filed 3,370 applications with Thailand’s Board of Investment (BOI) worth 1.88 trillion baht. That is 67% more than a year earlier and more than at any point in the BOI’s history. Almost 40% of the total went to the digital industry, in other words data centres. In the first nine months of 2026, applications already reached 1.71 trillion baht (+28%). But from April, new data centre applications stopped coming in, and in September the government put 166 projects on hold until standards for electricity, water and siting are issued. Since 2023 the main region for investment has been the East, and its leading province is Chonburi, home to Pattaya, although in the first half of 2026 the Central region was ahead by value of applications.
The 2025 record
An application is a company’s request for tax incentives, not money already spent. Years pass between an application, an approval and actual construction, and some projects drop out. With that caveat, this is what 2025 looked like:
- digital industry: 746.2 billion baht, 151 projects, mostly data centres;
- electronics: 277.6 billion baht, 470 projects, of which printed circuit boards and their materials accounted for 249.2 billion;
- energy from renewable sources and waste: 107.7 billion baht;
- automotive: 84.1 billion, agriculture and processing: 75.7 billion, chemicals: 58.4 billion, medical: 28.9 billion baht.
Foreign companies filed applications worth 1.36 trillion baht (+66%). Singapore came first with 547 billion, followed by Hong Kong, China, Japan and the United Kingdom. The BOI itself notes that Singaporean money often has parent companies from China, Japan and the US behind it. A likely explanation is that Singapore serves as a base for regional headquarters.
Almost 60% of the total, 1.11 trillion baht, went to the East, above all Chonburi, Rayong and Chachoengsao, the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). The Central region received 428 billion and the Northeast 112 billion. BOI certificates, after which money actually goes into construction within a year or two, were issued to 2,779 projects worth 1.15 trillion baht. By the BOI’s estimate, the projects approved in 2025 will create more than 220,000 jobs.
2026: even more applications
In the first quarter of 2026 alone, applications came to 1.02 trillion baht, 2.4 times as much as a year earlier, and 86% of that went to data centres and cloud. For the half-year the figure was 1.47 trillion baht (+37%), of which about 1.1 trillion was the digital industry. Actual investment in BOI projects over the half-year was about 536 billion baht (+27%). In the second quarter, roughly half of it, about 127 billion baht, went to AI-related industries: optics for data centres, printed circuit boards and hard drives. Over the first nine months of 2026, applications totalled 1.71 trillion baht (+28%), more than 1.17 trillion of it in the digital industry. That means only about 50 billion baht of digital industry applications came in during the third quarter: the data centre pause shows up in the numbers too.
Data centres: from boom to pause
The year began with a record. On 15 January the BOI approved seven data centre projects worth about 97 billion baht: three True Internet Data Centre projects in Chonburi and Samut Prakan totalling 223 MW, two GSA projects (Gulf, Singtel and AIS) in Rayong and Samut Prakan totalling 120 MW, Stellar in Bangkok and Fraer in Rayong and Samut Prakan. In 2025 there were 36 data centre applications worth 728 billion baht, a third of the total in Rayong and another third in Chonburi.
On 6 May came the biggest approval of the year: 842 billion baht for TikTok. This is not a data centre building but server hosting and expanded data processing in Bangkok, Samut Prakan and Chachoengsao. At the same time, Skyline was approved for 200 MW in Chachoengsao and Bridge Data Centres for 134 MW in Chonburi.
Over 2024–2026 the BOI approved 42 data centre projects totalling 3,400 MW. Far less is actually running so far: by BMI’s estimate, about 216 MW was in operation in Thailand in the second quarter of 2026, 70 MW of it in Chonburi.
The gap between paper and reality comes down to resources. From the end of March, an applicant had to get confirmation from the energy regulator first that the power would be available; since the summer, a project first needs approval from a dedicated BOI subcommittee on energy and data centre selection. Since April, the BOI has received no new data centre applications. In August the cabinet set up a data centre committee, and on 4 September it put 166 projects on hold (49 under construction and 117 awaiting permits) until standards for water, electricity, siting and safety are issued. One of the problems is fragmented permitting: some facilities are registered under other types of activity, including as warehouses. The government wants to choose new projects through a competition based on their benefit to the country, and data centres will pay more for electricity. At the end of October the committee approved draft minimum standards, with seven tiers by power consumption and a transition period for existing facilities, and sent them to the cabinet; no date has yet been announced for lifting the pause.
Who is already here
Of the global cloud giants, AWS is already in Thailand, with a three-zone region running since January 2025, and so is Google, whose cloud region in Bangkok opened in January 2026; Google’s own data centre is being built in the WHA industrial estate in Chonburi and is expected to open in 2027. Microsoft announced a region back in 2024 and in 2025 signed a partnership with CP Group and True IDC, but at the end of September 2026 the Azure page still lists the Thailand South region as a stated intention.
According to the Department of Business Development (DBD), Thailand has 1,023 companies connected with data centres and hosting. Their revenue grew by 51% in 2024 to 24.3 billion baht, and after a loss the year before, the industry made a profit of 1.44 billion baht. Of these companies’ capital, 78% is foreign, mostly Singaporean and American. About three quarters of the capital sits with 22 large companies: 83 billion baht out of 115 billion. In 2025, 157 new companies in the industry were registered, with capital of 3.7 billion baht.
Printed circuit boards and ZDT
The second big story is electronics. In January the BOI announced the approval of three more projects by Peng Shen Technology, a joint venture between Taiwan’s Zhen Ding Technology (ZDT), the world’s largest maker of printed circuit boards, and Thailand’s Saha Group. In total the venture has four projects worth more than 65 billion baht in Prachinburi province and more than 5,600 jobs. The first plant has been running since September 2025; it is ZDT’s only site outside China and Taiwan. The boards made here are complex ones, for smartphones and AI servers.
ZDT is part of a wave: since 2023 the BOI has counted 224 projects in printed circuit boards and electronic components worth 331 billion baht, and three more worth 22 billion were approved in May. By the BOI’s own assessment, this has made Thailand the number one producer of boards in Southeast Asia. How the country is building a semiconductor strategy around this is covered in the article on 2026 trends.
What this means for Pattaya and IT professionals
From 2023 to mid-2026, Chonburi drew applications worth 1.29 trillion baht, more than any other province in the East. Near Pattaya, True IDC, Bridge Data Centres and Google facilities are under construction, as is a DayOne campus in Amata City. For the region, digital infrastructure is becoming no less important than tourism.
In terms of jobs, this means demand for electrical and cooling engineers, network and fibre-optic specialists, cloud and cybersecurity specialists, and project managers: a single job fair held by DayOne and 30 partners in April offered about 500 such vacancies, and according to Deloitte data cited by the BOI (the country is not specified), data centre vacancies grew by 64% over 2023–2025. The BOI requires that within three years at least half of the management and expert positions in a data centre be held by Thais. There are no reliable figures on salaries in data centres specifically; according to Adecco’s general survey, data engineers and data scientists with up to three years’ experience earn up to 80,000 baht a month in Thailand in 2026.
The data centre pause may slow hiring in 2026–2027, but it will not make the demand for infrastructure go away: 216 operating megawatts is very little for a country that has approved projects for 3,400. Which roles are growing in the job market is covered in “15 new roles in Thailand”.
The bottom line
Over a year and a half, Thailand has become one of the main destinations for money going into AI infrastructure and electronics: record applications, the world’s biggest players, plants of a kind the country had never had. But 2026 showed the limit: there is not enough electricity and water for all the approved projects, and the state is moving from handing out incentives to selecting projects. For Chonburi and Pattaya this is still a long-term story: the largest projects are already being built here.
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