At the Company’s Investor Day in May 2025, senior management discussed how they collaborate across Keppel’s integrated ecosystem to pursue opportunities in digital infrastructure.   

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Keppel is setting itself apart with a uniquely integrated ecosystem for digital infrastructure. At the Company’s 2025 Investor Day, held in Singapore, senior management came together to discuss how Keppel is unlocking opportunities in power-constrained markets with investable, scalable, and defensible assets.

Harnessing strong customer relationships

Keppel’s digital infrastructure capabilities are not a sum of separate parts, but a tightly woven ecosystem spanning asset management, data centres, energy infrastructure, subsea connectivity, and more. This cohesiveness enables the Company to move with speed and scale where others may find it hard to follow.

“Our strategy is very simple. We’ll go wherever the customer wants us to go,” said Mr Manjot Singh Mann, CEO of Connectivity. “If the customer wants us to do a development for them, say in Johor Bahru, we’ll find the right place to do it there for them.”

Citing the Company’s global strategic framework agreement with hyperscaler, Amazon Web Services for data centres, subsea cables and renewable energy, Keppel’s CEO, Mr Loh Chin Hua said, “This allows us into their tents. We can check with them: we’ve got two sites in this city, which one would you prefer? That gives us a lot of clues where to focus our attention — where to power bank, where to land subsea cables.”

Banking on power

Keppel’s agility in expanding with data centre customers is underpinned by operating divisions working hand-in-glove to unravel opportunities, particularly in power-constrained markets. Ms Cindy Lim, CEO of Infrastructure, said, “Power now carries a premium defined by three attributes: number one, reliability - you don’t want volatile or unreliable power. Secondly, you want the power to be more sustainable. Thirdly, the ability to deliver superior Power Usage Efficiency is very important, and this comes from the cooling infrastructure.”

Energy efficiency is where, as Ms Lim explained, Keppel can bring to bear its know-how, harnessed in over 20 years of running large scale district cooling solutions for critical infrastructure. “These are some of the secret weapons that our ecosystem has, to deliver not only bankable, investable products, but also ones that are defensible and with good returns,” she said.

Through its integrated ecosystem for digital infrastructure, Keppel has the ability to provide a full suite of resilient energy, cooling and subsea cable connectivity solutions to unlock data centre opportunities in power-constrained markets. Pictured: The Keppel Data Centre Campus in Singapore where Keppel will be developing a third data centre together with its two data centre private funds. 

Having customer visibility and access to potential sites with power also help de-risk Keppel’s investments while sharpening its competitive edge. Ms Lee Hui Fang, Deputy CIO of Data Centres, shared, “We have an LP first mindset. Power banking helps because we are not in the business of speculating and speculatively building data centres. It gives us time to do front-end work without putting in the entire capital until we have more clarity from customers.”

Such collaboration creates a flywheel for growth across Keppel’s value chain. “When Cindy works with Mann on liquid cooling, we don’t need to sign NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) because we’re all part of the same group,” Mr Loh said. “Can someone in data centres work with another infrastructure player? Of course they can, but you can imagine the NDAs that they will need to sign. And who is going to own the IP (Intellectual Property) that they create? At Keppel, we don't need to do that because they (customers) can come to a one stop shop. And that’s very powerful.” 

Engineering possibilities

With an engineering mindset at its core, Keppel is not only creating investable infrastructure, but also shaping the future of digital ecosystems with its pursuit of more sustainable power solutions. Ms Lim shared how Keppel was “a forerunner in unlocking and pursuing the development of new energy vectors” including hydrogen-ready CCGTs (Combined Cycle Gas Turbines), green ammonia, carbon capture solutions, and biomethane that can support greener data centre operations.

“There are proprietary opportunities like the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project, which carries green attributes from hydropower, allowing us to bank and unlock new data centre planting capacity,” shared Ms Lim. “This is a real example demonstrating proprietary origination.”

Looking ahead, Keppel’s focus on power-constrained markets in Asia Pacific is set to expand fuelled by increasing demand from its private funds. Ms Lee said, “Just on cloud and AI inferencing, we are seeing a lot of growth in Asia Pacific. We’re already in Singapore, Japan, Australia, and we’re looking at South Korea. We feel we have a strong right to win.”

As a global asset manager and operator, Keppel’s ability to “unlock” complex opportunities through its digital infrastructure ecosystem is a key differentiator. “Whatever problem statement you have,” said Mr Loh, “We will figure a way to engineer around it. That creates a lot of opportunities, not just for LPs, but also for our customers and shareholders.”