The Tencent logo is displayed on the exterior of a building at the company’s headquarters, with a surveillance camera visible in the foreground, on November 30, 2024, in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China.
Tencent plans to expand its data center footprint in the Middle East, a top executive at the Chinese tech giant told CNBC, as the company looks to boost its cloud computing business outside China.
Dowson Tong, CEO of Tencent's cloud group, told CNBC that the company plans to expand the number of "availability zones," locations designated as sites for potential clusters of data centers, for its cloud services over the next 12 to 18 months, in countries across Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.
In the Middle East, Tencent is "actively" exploring building data centers there to service cloud customers, Dowson added.
"We do intend to increase our investment in the region and establish a stronger partnership network. And that's all in the plan," he said, declining to give more specific timelines or countries where exactly the availability zones might be.
Tencent's planned expansion in the Middle East comes as countries in the region draw in huge investments from tech giants to build AI data centers and other computing infrastructure.
Last year, Nvidia, OpenAI and others committed to building a massive AI infrastructure project under the Stargate brand in the United Arab Emirates.