Princeton Digital Group secured a $280 million green loan to help finance a $1.5 billion data center it’s building in southern Malaysia, a first for the Asian infrastructure operator as it aims to get that complex operational by June.

The Warburg Pincus-backed company, which builds and operates server facilities around the region, secured the financing from Maybank, Standard Chartered Plc and United Overseas Bank Ltd. Princeton Digital said the deal marked its first so-called green loan, a form of debt targeted at environmentally friendly projects.

From Microsoft Corp. to KKR&Co., tech firms and financiers are bankrolling data centers across Asia to support an accelerating boom in AI development and services. They’re needed to support an estimated 25% annual increase in demand for the infrastructure that underpins cloud services and generative AI. This month, Microsoft pledged to invest $2.2 billion in Malaysia.

Singapore-based Princeton Digital has said it’s aiming to borrow $1 billion to finance several projects. Founded in 2017, the company develops and operates facilities in China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan. Warburg Pincus invested in and helped set up the company.

In 2022, Princeton Digital raised more than $500 million in a funding round led by Abu Dhabi sovereign investor Mubadala Investment Co., joined by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. And in May 2023, it agreed to buy land in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor to build that 150-megawatt hyperscale data center, its first in the country.

The Johor Bahru region — connected by a causeway to Singapore — is emerging as one of Asia’s rising AI data center hotspots. Nvidia Corp. last year teamed up with local utility YTL Power International Bhd. to build a $4.3 billion AI data center park in the area.