Apple Plans to Invest More Than $250 Mln to Expand Singapore Campus

People shop at an Apple reseller store iBox at a mall in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
People shop at an Apple reseller store iBox at a mall in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
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Apple Plans to Invest More Than $250 Mln to Expand Singapore Campus

People shop at an Apple reseller store iBox at a mall in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
People shop at an Apple reseller store iBox at a mall in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)

Apple Inc plans to invest more than $250 million to expand its regional campus or operations in Ang Mo Kio, Singapore, according to a company statement dated April 17.
Two buildings acquired in 2022, located across from Apple's existing offices, will undergo a major upgrade, the US technology giant said.
"Singapore is truly a one-of-a-kind place, and we are proud of the connection we've built with this dynamic community of creators, learners, and dreamers," Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said in a statement.
Apple opened its first facility in Singapore in 1981 with 72 employees focused on Apple II, its early personal computer.
It has since grown to house more than 3,600 employees in the city-state, which serves as an operations center for Apple in the region.
Cook will meet Singapore's prime minister-designate Lawrence Wong as well as the city-state's incumbent leader Lee Hsien Loong this week as part of his Southeast Asia tour, Bloomberg News reported earlier on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter.



AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Singapore-headquartered AI cloud provider Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC) is planning to expand globally as its sees fast-growing demand for its energy saving technology, its CEO said on Thursday.

"Due to client demand, we’re looking to expand in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) and North America," CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenfield said, Reuters reported.

The startup, a partner of AI chip giant Nvidia, already operates what it calls "sustainable AI factories" in Australia and Singapore and is set to launch in India and Thailand.

Its clients in Singapore, where it operates over 1,200 of Nvidia's high-end H100 AI chips, include Facebook owner Meta who uses SMC's cloud to run its Llama 2 AI model.

While most data centres depend on air cooling technology, SMC uses immersion technology, submerging servers from Dell fitted with GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia in a synthetic oil called polyalphaolefin to draw heat away faster.

The technology behind the approach reduces energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional air cooling, according to the CEO.

Demand for AI is expected to increase 10-fold compared with 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The electricity consumption of data centres globally is expected to top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, roughly equivalent to Japan's total annual consumption, the IEA said in March.

SMC is currently raising $400 million in equity and $550 million in debt according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company declined to comment. The fundraising was first reported by Bloomberg.