Philippines lags ASEAN neighbors in AI data center investment — industry player

But new data sovereignty rules offer chance to catch up

MALAY, Aklan — The Philippines lags its neighbors in Southeast Asia in terms of investment and adoption of AI by businesses and government, but this may be about to change as the country begins implementing new rules on data sovereignty. 

Jimmy Go, CEO of IT systems distributors VST ECS, said  that with regards to AI, the Philippines is way behind other ASEAN countries. He said that VST also operates in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, and he noted that orders for AI servers in thse countries in the last two years have been “huge.”

“The Philippines is kind of late in this AI revolution,” Go said in a briefing with tech journalists during the company’s CXO Tech Summit in Boracay. 

One of the reasons why other ASEAN countries have been investing heavily in data centers and AI is that their governments are the biggest customers for these AI services, Go said. 

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently passed an Executive Order on Data Sovereignty, which mandates that classified, top-secret national data remain strictly within local jurisdiction, following a phased three-year implementation schedule.

“And this is the reason why I believe that there are more investments coming into the Philippines, like AWS [Amazon Web Services] has announced about $5 billion. Maybe Microsoft will come in. Maybe Google will also come in,” Go said. 

He noted that these major cloud service providers already have data centers in other ASEAN countries. Go said the Philippines was one of the last countries to have data sovereignty laws. 

The Philippines meanwhile should not worry about an AI bubble, because the country is still in the earliest stages of AI adoption. 

The International Monetary Fund warned in its October 2026 Global Financial Stability Report that an artificial intelligence (AI) market correction could trigger widespread global financial turmoil if tech profits fail to meet soaring expectations. The IMF noted that tech giants and data-center operators (hyperscalers) have ramped up heavy borrowing. 

Go, however, said that the Philippines is still in the earliest stage of AI investment, and “there’s no bubble to burst.”

“I think this is more on AI stocks, maybe more on the AI hyperscalers because they have really invested billions and billions of dollars on AI data centers. But in the Philippines, there’s no bubble to burst. We are still in the initial stage,” Go said.