The company replaced Megaspeed International Pte Ltd with cloud provider Zenlayer Inc at its Malaysian facility, people familiar with the matter said, citing a memo the Bain-owned firm sent to its lenders in February.
The data centre operator didn’t cite a reason for the switch in the letter, which was sent to the providers of a recent US$2.8 billion loan, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private matters.
The change follows a US government probe into Megaspeed’s ownership structure and whether it smuggled advanced Nvidia AI chips to China in violation of American export restrictions.
The removal of Megaspeed may help BDC reduce its exposure to scrutiny from US authorities.
Washington has intensified oversight of advanced US technology exports amid an escalating battle between the world’s two superpowers for artificial intelligence dominance.
For Megaspeed, one question is what happens to the vast quantities of Nvidia-powered AI servers that the chipmaker observed at BDC’s facilities – Megaspeed’s largest site by far – last fall.
Singapore-based Megaspeed is what’s called a neocloud, a specialised cloud-computing provider used by AI services.
Nvidia declined to comment on whether it was aware of the change at BDC or whether it had visited Megaspeed’s operations there in recent months.
The chipmaker performed spot checks across Megaspeed’s Southeast Asia footprint several times last year, and said in December that it would do so again “in the near future.”
Representatives for Bain Capital, BDC and Zenlayer declined to comment. Megaspeed didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“In its February letter to lenders, BDC said that all the 68.4MW of capacity earmarked for Megaspeed had been replaced by Los Angeles-based Zenlayer, a cloud infrastructure provider specialising in AI training models,” the people said.
BDC is one of the biggest data centre operators in Asia, a region that’s expected to get some US$800 billion of investment by 2030.
Bank loans are a key way for BDC to finance its expansion, and such deals hinge on its ability to demonstrate steady cash flows from tenants.
In order to grow, BDC needs billions more and began engaging banks for additional capital around the same time it sent the letter.
In March, the data operator was in talks with lenders to raise US$6 billion to fund its entry into Thailand.
The same month, it also sought to double the size of an existing loan to at least US$5 billion, building on an original facility aimed at expansion in Malaysia.