Transcript of Minister Josephine Teo's Keynote Speech at AirTrunk Regional Headquarters Opening Ceremony

Good morning, Mr. Robin Khuda, Founder and CEO of AirTrunk, Mr. Gautam Banerjee, Chairman of Blackstone, Colleagues and friends.

I'm delighted to join you for the official opening of AirTrunk’s regional headquarters at this beautiful location. Apart from thanking you for inviting me to this important occasion, I would also like to thank you for the view too.

When I first came to my Ministry, there was one aspect that I was unhappy about. At the time, the Ministry was called the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI).

1. I asked my colleagues: “For all the work that we do to grow the digital economy, we must first know the size of the digital economy?” Because if we can't measure it, it is hard to know whether our efforts have amounted to anything.

2. They explained there was no internationally standardised way of measuring the digital economy.

3. So, I said, “Okay, whilst international bodies figure this out, we certainly should take a stab at it and design our own methodology.”

In 2023, we put together the Singapore Digital Economy Report.

1. At that time, based on our robust methodology, we assessed the digital economy to be around 17% of Singapore’s GDP.

2. When we published the updated report for 2024, it had grown to 18.6%. This size puts us at almost on par with manufacturing in Singapore and surpasses financial services.

Singapore is a small country, but we do our part. At the United Nations, the Forum of Small States has about 108 members – comprising of countries with populations below 10 million.

Each time I meet with Forum members, they are curious about how we grew our digital economy, and they want to know what strategies we pursue.

There are four things we think we need to do well.

1. First, as in everything, you start with infrastructure. You need to have a good foundation in digital infrastructure.

2. Second, you need digital, enterprise, and workforce capabilities. You also need capabilities in the research community, and very importantly, you need governing capabilities. In new domains, without governance, you cannot create the right conditions for growth.

3. Third, in cross-cutting areas like digital, the government cannot do it alone. You must rally the whole of society for digital inclusion and AI adoption. In all of these instances, you have to bring the forces to bear and align them in the best way you can.

4. Fourth, you must consider regulations and legislation. You need ethos and a rational approach to shepherd developments. In this domain, you must cooperate with international partners.

I share with the members of the Forum that there is nothing very secretive about what we do. There is the Singapore Digital Gateway, and we talk quite openly about these things.

One common challenge they shared is building digital infrastructure in locations that have been incredibly difficult, and this is where AirTrunk comes in.

Through the work that you do, you are meeting a demand that appears to be still insatiable. That's a very good time to be in this sort of business. It's not the case that there are only upside opportunities, because there are a lot of issues to try and overcome. In many places where data centres are being built, local communities are very concerned about the energy consumption, competing with what citizens will be able to secure through the grid.

They are equally concerned about water consumption and what it means for their own needs, such as agriculture, which could be a very important lifeline for these communities.

It is an area that demands not just careful management but also has room for innovation.

Where Singapore is concerned, we see both challenges and opportunities.

AirTrunk has been with us on this journey for a decade, so you know that in terms of our density of data centres, we have about 1.4 gigawatts, and we've created headroom for up to 700 megawatts on Jurong Island.

We have designated this area, and it's a very important part of how we hope to support AI activities as they take off.

But we are not just doing capacity expansion. We've got to think about ways to operate more smartly, so we need a roadmap towards greener data centres, either using less energy or using greener options.

This raises the question, is it just the data centres or is it the way algorithms are written? Is there a way to make them greener? Green compute is another area that we'd like to work on. Keeping in mind that the data centres need to be able to talk to each other, our Digital Connectivity Blueprint attempts to look at ways in which we also secure a network of subsea cables that can turn connectivity into a reality. So, these are the challenges and opportunities that we see.

AirTrunk’s presence in Singapore is very much welcomed for a variety of reasons, not least because we appreciate your insights as an operator, developer, and investor.

We hope that by being able to hear from you in a much deeper way than we could before, we can develop better options that don't necessarily only serve Singapore's interests, but also the wider global interests.

How else does Singapore hope to support AirTrunk? I think in several ways. Domestically, your presence here will be part of an expansionary phase in our data centre landscape. You can tap into a very vibrant, innovative financial services system. I saw that you raised a very significant amount through green loans, and we know that the appetite for capital is very significant with the ongoing build-out. Access to funding is non-trivial and something that has to be addressed head-on internationally.

We are very interested to see ideas that we develop in Singapore, potentially becoming standards elsewhere in the world.

1. For example, we introduced standards for operating data centres in a tropical climate – can you operate them at a slightly higher temperature than what was initially thought possible? But we don't want to stop there.

2. We want to also look at standards when it comes to important things like getting subsea cables repaired in good time. Being able to create an environment that supports industry growth is something that Singapore is very keen to do.

3. Third, as AI becomes a bigger part of our economy, energy consumption will only increase. So, it is a non-trivial question for us to ask: “Can AI be made more resource efficient?” And I think if we can take a stab at this problem, not only in terms of the implementation, but at the research level, bringing the best minds to bear to tackle these important questions for humanity and Mother Earth – I think that could help contribute in a much bigger way.

The research community in Singapore is certainly one that we would encourage companies like AirTrunk to tap into.

Although Microsoft has been in Singapore for years, it was only last year that they set up a research facility here. Google DeepMind also decided to build a team here, and I can share with you that they're not looking for simple problems to solve. They really want to tackle the most difficult problems for humankind.

Just a few days ago, I met Quantinuum, a company that makes quantum computers.

1. They are building this platform to develop algorithms that solve problems that classical computers find very difficult to solve, and a lot of it will have to do with optimisation.

2. They were telling me about something really exciting. We have a very busy port, and port optimisation is actually very difficult to accomplish.

3. There are so many permutations that classical computers would take thousands of years to compute the most optimal solution – if, let's say a particular vessel was going to be delayed. Conceptually, you could get the quantum computer to narrow down the options and then apply AI using classical computers to complete the optimisation problem solving.

I share this only because I see that there are so many ways in which this network that is growing in Singapore can support your expansion plans and your dreams as a company.

I hope that Singapore as an environment, provides you, not only with this great view, but really a great backdrop for you to become the greatest company that you can be.

Congratulations once again. Thank you.