Aug 11, 2026 · 13 min · 9 segments
DeepSeek goes gigawatt. Bain lines up a $4bn exit. AirTrunk pulls in 30 lenders. The end-of-July APAC data centre round-up. \- DeepSeek plans a 1GW campus in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia — self-build plus…
James MurphyHostSo everyone's favorite discount AI model, DeepSeek, is building a one gigawatt data center in Inner Mongolia, which is part of China.
And I should, since Nomlin doesn't... appear on this podcast, I should speak up for the Mongolians and say that they typically don't prefer that name for it.
It's interesting because we don't normally get to see much on what the Chinese model makers and companies are building inside China.
Very unusual to have this reported at all.
Yeah, I think it's just given the scale.
Obviously, Gigawatt is fairly headline-grabbing, but they're looking to build it in a city called Ulan Cap.
which is in the provinces, say central region.
I think there's a fair amount of capacity actually in this part of the world.
I think there's like access to renewables and things like that, which actually makes it quite an attractive place to develop at scale.
And it's also part of the Eastern Data Western Compute Project, which basically is trying to push capacity away from main metros and into some of the provinces, I guess you'd call them.
And it's going to be some Chinese-made chips, which is another thing that is interesting to note in this story.
Yeah, so it's going to be almost an entirely domestic-made product supporting a domestic output.
And I think we're going to see more and more of this seek to nationalize and control AI from different countries.
Although at the moment, that's really only an option probably for the Chinese and for the Americans.
No one else owns that full stack quite as much.
But yeah, so the other thing to note, if I guess from a data center news perspective, is that they are talking about this coming online.
Not a full gigawatt, obviously, but the first buildings or so coming online by the end of 2027 or start of 2028.
This is not a groundbreaking and we are 18 months away from that.
That's pretty aggressive and ambitious and just gives a quick insight into the sort of timelines you're dealing with in some of these Chinese data center projects compared to what people are familiar with if they're looking somewhere like Frankfurt or Dublin these days.
I
think the Chinese have proven both domestically and in markets like Johor that they can run out these projects very quickly and much quicker than the typical 24-ish months.
So let's keep an eye.
Interesting one.
So everyone's favorite discount AI model, DeepSeek, is building a one gigawatt data center in Inner Mongolia, which is part of China.
And I should, since Nomlin doesn't... appear on this podcast, I should speak up for the Mongolians and say that they typically don't prefer that name for it.
It's interesting because we don't normally get to see much on what the Chinese model makers and companies are building inside China.
Very unusual to have this reported at all.
Yeah, I think it's just given the scale.
Obviously, Gigawatt is fairly headline-grabbing, but they're looking to build it in a city called Ulan Cap.
which is in the provinces, say central region.
I think there's a fair amount of capacity actually in this part of the world.
I think there's like access to renewables and things like that, which actually makes it quite an attractive place to develop at scale.
And it's also part of the Eastern Data Western Compute Project, which basically is trying to push capacity away from main metros and into some of the provinces, I guess you'd call them.
And it's going to be some Chinese-made chips, which is another thing that is interesting to note in this story.
Yeah, so it's going to be almost an entirely domestic-made product supporting a domestic output.
And I think we're going to see more and more of this seek to nationalize and control AI from different countries.
Although at the moment, that's really only an option probably for the Chinese and for the Americans.
No one else owns that full stack quite as much.
But yeah, so the other thing to note, if I guess from a data center news perspective, is that they are talking about this coming online.
Not a full gigawatt, obviously, but the first buildings or so coming online by the end of 2027 or start of 2028.
This is not a groundbreaking and we are 18 months away from that.
That's pretty aggressive and ambitious and just gives a quick insight into the sort of timelines you're dealing with in some of these Chinese data center projects compared to what people are familiar with if they're looking somewhere like Frankfurt or Dublin these days.
I
think the Chinese have proven both domestically and in markets like Johor that they can run out these projects very quickly and much quicker than the typical 24-ish months.
So let's keep an eye.
Interesting one.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.