A lease that turns a plan into a site
Data centre announcements are cheap. Land leases are not. In September 2026, Ho Chi Minh City approved the lease of 4.5 hectares in Saigon Hi-Tech Park to Starmason, the joint venture between Singapore’s Sembcorp Development and Vietnamese partner BB Holding, on a term running to 2076. The plot, lot T9 in the park’s Tang Nhon Phu area, is where Starmason will build a hyperscale data centre complex with registered investment of USD 480 million. The project’s investment registration certificate was issued on 24 March 2026. With land secured, the wager Sembcorp announced in the spring is now a construction obligation with a fifty year horizon, and the first data centre project backed by the Singapore group in Vietnam.
What is being built
The Starmason complex is designed for an initial 60 MW of IT load, expandable to 90 MW. Its workload targets are the standard hyperscale mix: artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data processing and high performance computing. The design can meet the Uptime Institute’s Tier III standard, with an ambition to reach Tier IV, the highest resilience tier. Starmason was established in November 2025, initially with registered capital of VND 50 billion, and Sembcorp Development, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sembcorp Industries, acquired a 49 percent stake in December 2025, with BB Holding holding the balance. The structure is deliberate. The Singapore partner brings the operating brand and hyperscale customer relationships. The Vietnamese partner brings local execution. The land lease decision adds the incentives typical for strategic projects in the park, including eligibility for land rent exemption where conditions are met, and it binds the developer to use the land for the approved purpose, fund the project on schedule and meet construction, environmental and fire safety rules, or lose the exemptions and face penalties.
Why Sembcorp, why now
Sembcorp Development’s chief executive Lee Ark Boon said in March 2026 that Vietnam’s digital economy was accelerating on the back of cloud adoption and AI demand, and the group has said Starmason will look to expand its data centre pipeline in Vietnam beyond this first site. Read the wager in regional terms. Singapore itself is land and power constrained for new data centres, and its capital has spent years building digital infrastructure in larger neighbouring markets. Southern Vietnam offers what Singapore cannot: hectares inside an established high tech park, a metropolitan economy of more than ten million people generating data demand, and a government actively courting hyperscale investment. Sembcorp is not a speculative entrant. It operates industrial parks and energy businesses across Asia, including long standing Vietnam Singapore industrial parks. A data centre is a natural extension: the group increasingly sells integrated sites where power, land and digital capacity come together.
A park filling with rivals
Starmason does not arrive alone. In April 2026 the city granted investment certificates to four high tech projects in Saigon Hi-Tech Park worth a combined USD 1.23 billion. Alongside Starmason sat the Evolution DC VN project, backed by a Singapore consortium of Hathor, Frontier and Evolution, at more than USD 508 million for 52 MW of IT load, with a commitment to use more than 30 percent renewable energy and a net zero goal for 2045. Two further projects covered biomedical technology and smart electronics. City reporting counts three large data centre projects in the park with combined registered capital near USD 1.15 billion. For the park, the cluster effect is the prize: shared grid investment, a supplier ecosystem, and a claim to be southern Vietnam’s digital infrastructure address. For Starmason, the neighbours are both validation and competition for the same grid capacity and the same anchor tenants.
The power question underneath
Every figure in this story is a proxy for one variable: electricity. Sixty megawatts of IT load, ninety at expansion, means a facility drawing power on the scale of a small city district, continuously, with no tolerance for interruption. The project’s Tier ambitions, its fifty year lease and its Singaporean operator all reduce commercial risk. None of them generates a single megawatt. The decisive negotiations are with the grid: connection capacity, dual feeds, substation works and the renewable share that global cloud and AI customers increasingly require in their contracts. Evolution’s public commitment to more than 30 percent renewable energy shows the direction tenants are pushing. Starmason’s filings are quieter on power sourcing, which makes its eventual supply arrangements the detail to watch.
What the wager says about Vietnam
Step back and the Starmason lease marks a shift in the kind of foreign investment Vietnam is landing. A decade ago, a USD 480 million Singapore project in an industrial park would have meant a factory and export containers. This one means servers, cooling and uptime guarantees, employing fewer people per dollar but anchoring Vietnam inside regional cloud and AI networks that factories increasingly depend on. Sembcorp has bet that Ho Chi Minh City can deliver land, permits and power at hyperscale speed. The lease to 2076 says the city has bet the same. Construction progress and the power plan will settle who read the grid correctly.
Related reading
- A USD 3.5 Billion AI Data Centre Bet Lands in Tay Ninh
- Data Centres Are Power Projects Now
- ASEAN’s Data Centre Map in 2026
Sources
TNGlobal, 11 September 2026, on Ho Chi Minh City leasing 4.5 hectares to Starmason, the USD 480 million registered investment, 60 MW expandable to 90 MW, and the Sembcorp Development stake. Vietnam Investment Review, September 2026, on the land lease decision to March 2076, investment incentives and the project’s Tier III design with a Tier IV aim. Vietstock, September 2026, on the investment registration certificate of 24 March 2026, Starmason’s establishment in November 2025 and the park’s three data centre projects totalling near USD 1.15 billion. VietnamPlus, April 2026, on the four Saigon Hi-Tech Park projects worth more than USD 1.23 billion, including the Evolution DC project at more than USD 508 million.
