PLDT's next data center needs 100 megawatts. The last one is not full yet.
Vitro says its next building must be at least 100 megawatts, bigger than all nine data centers PLDT runs today. It will not break ground until the Santa Rosa campus fills up, and only 10 of that campus's 36 megawatts are switched on.
PLDT told reporters on Thursday that the next data center it builds will have to be huge. Victor Genuino, who heads the company's data center arm Vitro, put a floor on it. In his words: pag magtatayo tayo ng next data center, I think it has to be not less than 100 megawatts. A megawatt here is just a measure of how much electricity the building can draw, which is the industry's way of saying how much computing it can hold.
For scale, PLDT runs nine data centers today with 63 megawatts between all of them. One new building at 100 megawatts would be larger than everything the company has built so far, put together.
The catch is in the same announcement. PLDT will not start that building until its Santa Rosa campus in Laguna is full. Santa Rosa opened a little over a year ago and is designed for 36 megawatts. Ten of those are energized right now, and another five are spoken for within the year.
Why it matters
Every few weeks another Philippine data center gets announced, and it is hard for anyone outside the industry to tell which ones are real. This is the country's biggest operator putting its own numbers on the table. The plan to double is real. So is the condition attached to it: the customers have to show up first. That is the most honest picture anyone in the industry has given of where the AI demand actually is, and it is a long way from the announcements.
The catch to watch
Chairman Manuel Pangilinan named the two things that decide where the building goes, and neither is about AI. One is power, both having it and what it costs. The other is water, because these buildings run hot and cooling them takes a lot of it. Metro Manila scores well on both, he said, since Meralco is reliable and there are two water concessionaires. The sites being weighed are New Clark City in Tarlac, General Trias in Cavite, and land closer to Metro Manila. Whichever one wins, it wins on electricity and water, not on anything a chatbot can do.
There is one more thing worth holding in view. While PLDT talks about doubling the data center business, it is also preparing to sell half of it. The company plans to list Vitro as a real estate trust in the last quarter of the year, offloading 50 percent of the shares for as much as 24.2 billion pesos. Growth and cashing out are being announced in the same breath.