Indonesia courts Nvidia and Big Tech to add 1.3 gigawatts of data-centre capacity, more than doubling its footprint
Speaking at a KADIN Diplomatic Economic Breakfast in Jakarta on 10 July, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said global investors have signalled interest in building data centres in Indonesia with a combined 1.3 gigawatts of capacity — a step change from the roughly 580 megawatts operational today. He put the investment required to realise the pipeline at between US$15 billion and US$20 billion, framing it as Indonesia's response to surging global demand for AI compute.
Airlangga named Nvidia among the prospective investors, saying the chipmaker is looking to enter the market alongside partners from Australia, though he disclosed neither an amount nor the Australian entity involved. State-owned telecommunications group Telkom will invest directly, and the minister said "almost all" major technology firms are expanding facilities in the Karawang industrial belt east of Jakarta. Separately, he pointed to a tie-up with British chip-design firm Arm to route some 15,000 local engineers into the global Arm ecosystem, casting the build-out as a human-capital play and not only a hardware one.
Indonesia's Flip brings Paytm's Soundbox voice-payment device to Jakarta merchants through Flip Kasir
Indonesian fintech Flip announced on 9 July a strategic partnership with India's Paytm to bring the Soundbox — a small device that announces each successful digital payment aloud, letting merchants confirm receipt without checking a phone — to Indonesian shopkeepers. The device will be distributed through Flip Kasir, Flip's merchant-payments platform, with the rollout starting among selected businesses in Jakarta. Flip, founded in 2015, is licensed by Bank Indonesia and says it serves more than 16 million customers across remittance, bill payments and merchant services.
The structure has Flip running local execution while Paytm supplies the technology and operational playbook it built serving millions of Indian merchants, and it marks Paytm's most concrete Southeast Asian expansion to date — an entry that leans on an incumbent's merchant base rather than a ground-up build. The companies disclosed no financial terms; DealStreetAsia has reported that the wider collaboration is expected to include an equity investment of around US$25 million by Paytm into Flip, which neither party has confirmed. Flip group chief executive Pratyush Prasanna tied the move to the rapid growth of QRIS, Indonesia's national QR standard, and Insignia Ventures — an early Flip backer — called it a vote of confidence in the company.
Vietnam's F88 opens a US$59m public share offering as it works toward a main-board HOSE listing
F88 Investment JSC, the Hanoi-based alternative lender backed by Mekong Capital, opened subscriptions on 6 July for a public share offering of 22 million shares priced at 71,000 dong each, targeting roughly 1.56 trillion dong (about US$59.3 million) in proceeds. The State Securities Commission cleared the offering, whose registration window runs to 27 July, with results due on 29 July and payment settling by early August. The offer price sits at roughly an 8.7% discount to F88's recent market price of about 77,800 dong.
F88 operates small-value loans secured by vehicles alongside insurance and money-transfer services, and describes itself as the leader in Vietnam's modern pawn-lending sector with around 85% share of organised chains and 976 transaction offices as of June 2026. The company currently trades on the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) and says the public offering is the step that lets it meet the conditions to move to the main board of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) before the end of 2026.
Eyes on the Day Ahead
Over the next few days and weeks, watch three threads from today's brief. In Indonesia, the test of the 1.3GW ambition is any move from statement to signed terms — a formal Nvidia-Australia structure, a Telkom capital figure, or Karawang power and land allocations. On Flip-Paytm, watch for confirmation (or denial) of the reported US$25 million equity investment, which would reclassify the deal from a licensing arrangement to a strategic stake. And F88's offering closes on 27 July with results on 29 July, the near-term read on retail appetite ahead of Vietnam's expected FTSE Russell reclassification in September.
Layer 7 Ventures is a research-driven firm focused on AI and cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia. Views expressed are those of the firm and do not constitute investment advice.
