Will CMC’s $250m Data Centre Become Vietnam’s ‘AI Heart’?
CMC Corporation is taking a major step forward in Vietnam’s digital infrastructure race, with official approval for a US$250m data centre in Ho Chi Minh City.
Backed by the Saigon Hi-Tech Park (SHTP) Management Board, the CMC Hyperscale Data Centre will serve as the digital foundation for Vietnam’s AI-powered ambitions and part of a broader strategy to connect the country to global tech networks.
An ‘AI Heart’ for Vietnam’s tech and big data
Positioned at the eastern edge of Ho Chi Minh City, the facility marks the beginning of what CMC calls the country’s ‘AI Heart’.
The centre is designed to serve as a powerhouse for AI workloads, cloud computing, big data processing and cybersecurity—all of which require massive, scalable computing environments.
The centre begins operations with a 30 MW power capacity, with infrastructure ready to expand to 120 MW. This level of headroom is aimed directly at supporting AI development, large-scale digital services and next-generation enterprise systems.
The facility forms part of CMC’s broader ecosystem strategy, integrating with its existing cloud platform and AI stack, developed entirely in Vietnam.
These systems include a GPU farm running over 1,000 NVIDIA GH200 units and a string of Uptime Tier III-certified data centres that already serve as core pillars in the region’s tech network.
"AI will usher in a new era in which it profoundly affects society, the economy, and all facets of daily life," says Nguyen Trung Chinh, President of CMC. "In CMC's development strategy and business plan, artificial intelligence is becoming essential. Specifically, we anticipate that by 2028, the Corporation would employ 15,000 IT engineers, of which 6,000 are AI engineers, making up 40% of our human resources."
Infrastructure with speed, scale and sustainability
CMC’s design incorporates a full range of next-generation connectivity standards.
Technologies like XGS-PON (10 Gigabit-capable Symmetrical Passive Optical Network), SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network), SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) and 800G DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) optical transmission will ensure that data moves with speed, reliability and security across every layer of the network.
A standout feature of the project is the use of digital twin technology – creating a live, virtual replica of the physical data centre.
This enables real-time monitoring and optimisation of operations, a critical feature in hyperscale environments where every watt and packet counts. The result is a more responsive, efficient and resilient infrastructure backbone.
In terms of environmental strategy, CMC places a clear emphasis on green infrastructure.
Renewable energy sources will be prioritised from the outset, with the goal of creating a facility that meets international green data centre standards.
By investing early in energy-efficient systems and water-saving technologies, CMC aims to avoid the typical environmental pitfalls of large-scale computing.
Laying the groundwork for Vietnam’s AI export ambitions
CMC’s long-term aim is to create infrastructure capable of both supporting Vietnam’s internal digital transformation and attracting global AI and cloud enterprises.
This project is an upgrade on all fronts for the country’s data centre industry capacity – technically, environmentally and strategically – and places Vietnam more firmly on Southeast Asia’s data centre map.
Much of the infrastructure supports CMC’s homegrown technology stack.
The company’s 100% Vietnamese-developed cloud platform, CMC Cloud, provides enterprise-level services across the country.
Meanwhile, its C.OpenAI ecosystem brings together 25 core AI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), computer vision, voice processing and a data lakehouse framework.
These technologies are already being commercialised. Products like C.Face, C.OCR (SmartDocs) and CLS legal assistant have all made impact in the market.
Most notably, the CATI-VLM model, developed by CMC ATI, achieved a top 12 global ranking in the 2025 Robust Reading Competition, outperforming tech giants like Amazon Textract, GPT-4 Vision Turbo, Baidu, and Deepseek.
The project’s true value lies not just in its scale, but in its long-term vision.
From the outset, CMC has set out to be a pioneer in Vietnam’s data centre landscape with this investment. By building an open technology ecosystem of CMC Cloud – entailing AI, big data, cybersecurity – the company is to develop and enhance core capabilities such as a GPU farm with over 1,000 NVIDIA GH200 units and multiple Uptime Tier III-certified data centres.