Such trusts represent only one layer of a much larger digital infrastructure ecosystem
[SINGAPORE] When Masayuki Ozaki left buy-side investing last year to become chief financial officer of the manager of pure-play data centre real estate investment trust (Reit) NTT DC Reit, he might reasonably have expected to spend his time explaining occupancy and rental reversions.
Its six data centres in Northern California, Northern Virginia, Vienna and Singapore run at mid-to-high-90 per cent occupancy, and the latest quarterly update showed a 13.4 per cent rental reversion.
Yet units trade at a yield now closer to 8 per cent, above the 7.5 per cent pitched at its July 2025 listing – a gap some investors read as an asset-quality warning.
But Ozaki puts the gap down to unfamiliarity rather than fundamentals. Two-thirds of the portfolio sits in markets such as Sacramento and Vienna that Singapore investors do not know well.
“Our experience suggests that there is still a learning curve for investors when it comes to data centres, which work differently from traditional real estate: How would they be able to tell what makes a good data centre or a good data centre market?” Ozaki told The Business Times.
NTT DC Reit is about as legible as an artificial intelligence-adjacent investment gets here. If that’s still misunderstood, what chance does the rest of the ecosystem behind it have?
The AI play
It would be unsurprising, then, that Singapore investors looking for AI exposure may be overlooking some of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom.
While data centre Reits have become the default way to invest in the theme, they represent only one layer of a much larger digital infrastructure ecosystem.
For example, ask Keppel CEO Loh Chin Hua whether the market has fully appreciated the group as an AI play, and he reaches for an anecdote.
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At a Keppel Next event last year – a showcase of the technologies the group works with, themed on how it both enables and embeds AI – Keppel invited some of the analysts covering the stock. One of them came up to him afterwards with a verdict: “You are the only AI player in Singapore.”
The claim sounds broad. But what the analyst was pointing to was that Singapore has no shortage of companies with AI exposure: landlords leasing space to hyperscalers, contractors building the shells, utilities selling the power. What it lacks is a company present at every layer at once.
Keppel can provide the data centre, the power that runs it, the subsea cable that connects it, and the third-party capital that funds all three through its asset management arm.
Loh’s own term for this is “an ecosystem player”: the ability, as he describes it, to bring data centres, power, connectivity and asset management into the same solution.
The economics explain why that matters. The infrastructure AI rides on is capital intensive enough that, in Loh’s words, “no company can actually put it all on its balance sheet” – which is precisely the argument for Keppel’s asset-light model.
As Loh puts it, the difference is between building one power plant off the balance sheet and building five with investors alongside.
JPMorgan’s head of Singapore property research Mervin Song makes the same case in valuation terms.
In an October 2025 initiation note, he argued that Keppel “should command a scarcity premium as Singapore’s only listed play on this theme”, spanning data centres, power and subsea cables.
Loh’s own postscript to the analyst’s remark at the Keppel Next event is the more interesting part. It is still, he said, something the market needs to appreciate. And therein lies the opportunity.
Indeed, the AI boom is not merely driving demand for chips and software. Beyond that, every large language model such as Claude and ChatGPT requires data centres, electricity, cooling systems, fibre connectivity and capital to fund.
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