A Middle Eastern telecom heavyweight just made its move into one of the world's hottest compute markets. Ooredoo Group rolled out Zankore, Indonesia's first dedicated AI compute and neocloud platform, with a three-year target to reach 1 gigawatt of capacity. For context, that's the power footprint of a small country's entire electrical grid dedicated to running AI models.
The play isn't new for Ooredoo. Since 2024, the group has been rolling out Nvidia-powered AI platforms across the MENA region, stacking up sovereign cloud offerings and GPU-as-a-Service contracts. Zankore extends that empire into Southeast Asia, a region where enterprise demand for locally hosted AI workloads is exploding faster than cloud infrastructure can catch up. Indonesia sits at the center of that storm. With 270 million people and an economy rapidly moving online, it's the obvious landing spot.
The constellation of players and what they bring
Zankore isn't solo. Ooredoo partnered with its Indonesian subsidiary Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH), Nvidia, and Nokia to wire this thing together. Nvidia supplies the supercomputing silicon and accelerated compute tech. Nokia's job is harder, in a way, modernizing 5G radio access networks to handle the low-latency, high-throughput connectivity that serious AI training demands. You can't train large language models on a network built for TikTok streams.
IOH already owns a piece of telecom history here. In 2025, it became Southeast Asia's first telecom operator to commercially deploy AI-RAN technology. Only two carriers globally have done it before. AI-RAN uses machine learning to optimize radio resource allocation, making cellular networks smarter without forcing operators to build new tower infrastructure. It's efficiency through software, not hardware.
The corporate infrastructure moved fast. Zankore Hypercloud Singapore Pte. Ltd. got incorporated in April 2026, signaling that both Indonesia and Singapore will anchor the operation. Not just Indonesia's compute power, but Singapore's data center ecosystem and fintech hubs.
What 1 gigawatt actually means for the region
The ambition here is real. Major hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google have been scrapping to lock down GPU supply and power capacity for years. A telecom player committing to 1 GW of AI-specific infrastructure in a single regional market signals where the next wave of compute spending is headed, and it's away from the West Coast of the US.
Indonesia's government has been actively courting data center and AI infrastructure bets, offering incentives for companies that build sovereign cloud capacity. This wasn't an accident. Ooredoo saw the signal and moved in. For enterprises across Southeast Asia that need to keep sensitive models and training data onshore, Zankore becomes the option that didn't exist before.
The timeline matters too. Three years to 1 GW is aggressive, but Ooredoo has the telecom infrastructure already in place, the Nvidia partnership locked, and Nokia's radio expertise on speed dial. This isn't a startup cobbling together a data center in someone's warehouse.
This article is informational and should not be construed as financial or investment advice. Always conduct your own research before making decisions in emerging infrastructure markets.
