Comin Asia partners with Nokia to build AI data centre infrastructure in SEA

Details: John Tanner; Category: Data Centres & Networks; 30 June 2026; 785 views

Cambodian engineering and infrastructure firm Comin Asia said on Monday that it’s partnering with Nokia to to design and deploy AI-ready data centre infrastructure across Southeast Asia, starting with Cambodia and Laos.

Comin Asia said the partnership addresses accelerating demand for secure, sovereign, and scalable AI infrastructure in the region, particularly in emerging and underserved markets where power availability, regulatory conditions, and deployment realities determine where and how AI infrastructure is built.

The initiative will focus on modular, in-building and edge-ready data centre deployments, enabling enterprises and governments to process data closer to where it’s generated, while maintaining control over data sovereignty, data privacy, and operational resilience.

Under the partnership agreement, Comin Asia will serve as the regional systems integrator and delivery partner, while Nokia will provide the technology backbone, including high-performance data centre fabric, automation platforms, and secure connectivity solutions required to support AI workloads at scale.

Together, Comin Asia and Nokia will deliver end-to-end infrastructure systems spanning data centre networking (including IP, optical, and switching architectures), edge computing frameworks, secure and resilient connectivity, automation and orchestration for AI workloads, and energy-aware infrastructure optimization.

Initial deployments and feasibility assessments are underway in Cambodia and Laos, with expansion planned across additional Southeast Asian markets as infrastructure and regulatory conditions align.

Comin Asia noted that the projects will be aligned with policy and energy realities for each market. For example, Cambodia represents an early-stage but highly deployable market for localized infrastructure, while Laos offers surplus power capacity and increasing capacity in cross border network connectivity, positioning it as a potential regional AI infrastructure hub. Meanwhile, Thailand faces increasing grid pressure and regulatory complexity for large-scale data centres.

Comin Asia said the partnership is designed to translate these conditions into operational infrastructure, as well as policies in each market regarding data sovereignty, privacy, and compliance, reduced dependency on global hyperscaler ecosystems, and resilient, localized infrastructure.

The partnership will also support enterprise AI deployments, government digital infrastructure initiatives and industry-specific applications across energy, telecoms, finance and public sector.

Comin Asia said its Nokia partnership takes a different approach to other hyperscale data centre projects in that it’s focused on execution and delivery designed specifically for frontier and underdeveloped markets. The projects will focus on modular and scalable infrastructure (as opposed to single-site hyperscale builds), integration of power availability, policy conditions, and infrastructure design, and a model that prioritizes operational systems over conceptual frameworks.

Comin Asia CEO Ivan Keogh said this approach reflects a broader shift in the AI infrastructure landscape, where power, proximity, and policy are becoming more decisive than capital alone.

“This partnership is about building that infrastructure in the markets where it is most viable, not just most visible,” Keogh said in a statement.

“By combining Nokia’s validated data centre network solutions with Comin Asia’s regional execution capabilities, we are enabling a new class of AI infrastructure that is distributed, secure, and aligned with real-world deployment conditions,” said Ajay Sharma, country manager of Nokia Thailand and Cambodia.