Vietnam IT major FPT to make big investment in Danang

FPT, Vietnam's leading information technology corporation, plans to invest VND6,000 billion ($258 million) in Danang in the years 2022-2025.

"We aim to complete the development of our technology, education and urban complex in the city by 2024 to accommodate about 10,000 software programmers," Truong Gia Binh, FPT chairman told Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on the sidelines of Danang Investment Forum 2022 in the central city Saturday.

FPT is willing to lead startups to turn Danang into a digital innovation hub in the future, he said.

The FPT chairman noted that Danang is capable of making use of unfolding opportunities to develop into a high-tech startup and game software center as the city is now home to many world-leading companies in game software technology and high-tech industries.

“The city possesses many good conditions in terms of policies, labor force, location, and urban infrastructure to make digital development by leaps and bounds by 2025, becoming an intellectual center of central Vietnam and a “dragon” the way Singapore succeeded.”

The world’s software market is growing strongly at an average 11.3% a year to $608.7 billion by 2022. In this, the global game industry market, worth over $200 billion in 2022, is developing as strong as a storm in terms of revenue, gamers and the participation of corporate giants like Netflix, Snapchat, TikTok, Amazon, Google, and Apple, according to Binh.

"Vietnam is now ranked seventh in terms of global game downloads. On average, among every 25 games downloaded, one is produced by a Vietnamese company, according to App Annie, a date AI company," he added.

FPT City Danang JSC, an FPT subsidiary, in late May held a groundbreaking ceremony for a series of projects totaling VND2,600 billion ($112 million) in the FPT Danang technology, education and urban complex named FPT City in Ngu Hanh Son district.

The projects reflect FPT’s commitment to transforming Danang into an ecological, modern, smart, and livable city. It will also create a modern working environment in the field of IT and software development, as well as intensive training in IT human resources.

The corporation in March proposed to develop three complex projects in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa that will include technology facilities, housing areas, resorts, and services.

FPT has implemented many large-scale projects across the country like the 1,600-hectare Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park in Hanoi, the 181-hectare FPT urban area in Danang, and the 240-hectare FPT Tam Ky-Quang Nam technology, education and urban area in nearby Quang Nam province.

In May 2020, the company began building a data center in Ho Chi Minh City's District 9. The eight-storey center is developed on an area of 10,000 square meters, providing 3,600 racks. It was considered Vietnam’s largest data center at that time and was set for completion by the first quarter of 2021. However, construction has not been finished and FPT has not updated project timelines.