日本数据中心需求激增，但建设能力成为瓶颈。大型总包商被预订至至少2028年，部分电气等专业分包甚至要到2029年之后才有空档，过去约两年完工的专案如今普遍拉长到三年甚至更久。在东京，现有机柜容量已被占用约93%，未来新建项目中近一半在完工前就已预租，导致AI与云端营运商难以及时落地GPU伺服器。
市场同时呈现容量与成本的双重飙升。过去五年日本总数据中心容量已超过三倍，达到约6.8吉瓦与269座设施；东京连续第二年成为全球建设成本最高市场。2020至2025年间，整体建筑成本预计上涨38%，数据中心专案成本则约飙升至2.5倍，承包商毛利率可达2成以上，使其更倾向挑选大型或声誉佳的外资客户。
技术与策略差距进一步拉长工期风险。新加坡自2015年起对5,000平方公尺以上项目强制采用BIM，因此典型50MW数据中心首期约两年可完工，日本类似专案却可能耗时近两倍。为缩短从决策到上线的时间，日本业者转向既有工厂与商业设施改造，例如KDDI在不到一年内将大阪工厂改造成搭载最新GB200 GPU的AI数据中心，同时SoftBank在北海道开发约70万平方公尺园区并采用模组化、预制机柜以分阶段扩容。
Japan’s data center boom is colliding with a construction bottleneck. Major general contractors are fully booked until at least 2028, while some specialist subcontractors, especially for electrical work, have availability only from 2029 onward, stretching build cycles that once took about two years to three years or more. In Tokyo, roughly 93% of live capacity is already occupied and nearly half of future builds are pre-leased, making it difficult for AI and cloud operators to deploy GPU servers on time.
Capacity and costs are surging in parallel. Over the past five years, Japan’s total data center capacity has more than tripled to about 6.8 gigawatts across 269 facilities, even as Tokyo ranks as the world’s most expensive construction market for the second straight year. Between 2020 and 2025, overall construction costs are projected to rise 38%, while data center project costs have jumped roughly 2.5 times, with profit margins often exceeding 20%, encouraging contractors to prioritize large or blue-chip foreign clients.
Technology and strategy gaps are amplifying schedule risks. In Singapore, where BIM has been mandatory for public projects and private buildings above 5,000 square meters since 2015, a typical 50-megawatt data center first phase can be delivered in about two years, whereas a similar project in Japan may take nearly twice as long. To compress the timeline from investment decision to operation, Japanese players are pivoting to retrofits: KDDI is converting an Osaka factory into a GB200 GPU-equipped AI facility in under a year, while SoftBank is building a roughly 700,000-square-meter Hokkaido campus using containerized, prefabricated modules for staged, on-demand capacity expansion.
市场同时呈现容量与成本的双重飙升。过去五年日本总数据中心容量已超过三倍，达到约6.8吉瓦与269座设施；东京连续第二年成为全球建设成本最高市场。2020至2025年间，整体建筑成本预计上涨38%，数据中心专案成本则约飙升至2.5倍，承包商毛利率可达2成以上，使其更倾向挑选大型或声誉佳的外资客户。
技术与策略差距进一步拉长工期风险。新加坡自2015年起对5,000平方公尺以上项目强制采用BIM，因此典型50MW数据中心首期约两年可完工，日本类似专案却可能耗时近两倍。为缩短从决策到上线的时间，日本业者转向既有工厂与商业设施改造，例如KDDI在不到一年内将大阪工厂改造成搭载最新GB200 GPU的AI数据中心，同时SoftBank在北海道开发约70万平方公尺园区并采用模组化、预制机柜以分阶段扩容。
Japan’s data center boom is colliding with a construction bottleneck. Major general contractors are fully booked until at least 2028, while some specialist subcontractors, especially for electrical work, have availability only from 2029 onward, stretching build cycles that once took about two years to three years or more. In Tokyo, roughly 93% of live capacity is already occupied and nearly half of future builds are pre-leased, making it difficult for AI and cloud operators to deploy GPU servers on time.
Capacity and costs are surging in parallel. Over the past five years, Japan’s total data center capacity has more than tripled to about 6.8 gigawatts across 269 facilities, even as Tokyo ranks as the world’s most expensive construction market for the second straight year. Between 2020 and 2025, overall construction costs are projected to rise 38%, while data center project costs have jumped roughly 2.5 times, with profit margins often exceeding 20%, encouraging contractors to prioritize large or blue-chip foreign clients.
Technology and strategy gaps are amplifying schedule risks. In Singapore, where BIM has been mandatory for public projects and private buildings above 5,000 square meters since 2015, a typical 50-megawatt data center first phase can be delivered in about two years, whereas a similar project in Japan may take nearly twice as long. To compress the timeline from investment decision to operation, Japanese players are pivoting to retrofits: KDDI is converting an Osaka factory into a GB200 GPU-equipped AI facility in under a year, while SoftBank is building a roughly 700,000-square-meter Hokkaido campus using containerized, prefabricated modules for staged, on-demand capacity expansion.