Summary

  • HEPZA asked Ho Chi Minh City on 15 October to align guidance on the tariff for SGI-HCM Campus, whose roughly US$2.1bn investment certificate was issued in July. HEPZA said the unanswered classification affects financing and timing; a Q4 groundbreaking is the current target, after an earlier 29 August date moved.
  • The rule turns on use: Circular 60 places third-party data-processing services in the business category, while the Ministry’s public explanation distinguishes own-use and mixed-use facilities. No project-specific ruling, power contract, customer contract or electricity allocation has been published.
  • The announced first phase is 50MW of IT/GPU load for about 28,000 GPUs, not a disclosed grid connection or a billable energy profile. Registration, construction, connected capacity, capital drawdown and customer demand remain separate milestones.

Analysis

The largest number attached to SGI-HCM Campus is not the next number investors need. Ho Chi Minh City issued the Tan Phu Trung AI Factory an investment-registration certificate in July for about US$2.1bn. At the city’s 15 October nine-month review, the industrial-zone authority HEPZA asked for help resolving whether the campus would receive a production-use or business-use electricity tariff. HEPZA said the issue was affecting the project’s financing plan and implementation schedule. The then-current groundbreaking target was the fourth quarter, after the earlier 29 August date had moved. The public record does not say that tariff was the sole reason for the change. Báo Xây dựng reported HEPZA’s request and the project timetable.

The investment certificate records an approved project value. It does not show how much capital has been drawn, what lenders have committed, or which customers have signed for computing capacity. That distinction matters in a city whose investment agency reported US$17.225bn of registered FDI by 19 September and said HEPZA’s 2026–2030 target combines US$20–21bn of attraction with disbursement above 70% of registered value. The city’s own framing puts execution alongside attraction. A project can count toward the headline before its equipment consumes electricity or sells a service. ITPC’s September account lists the AI Factory at about US$2.1bn and describes the disbursement target.

The planned commercial model makes the tariff question concrete. ITPC’s March account describes a first phase of about 50MW of IT/GPU load, equivalent to roughly 28,000 GPUs, intended to provide high-performance computing, cloud and data services to clients in Vietnam and abroad. It also records an expectation that full capital disbursement would be completed by the end of Q1 2027. Those are project plans. The announcement did not disclose a signed customer book, a phase-one power purchase agreement, or how much electricity would serve the joint venture’s own operations rather than outside customers. ITPC published the project outline after the March 11 memorandum.

Vietnam’s Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT, effective from 2 December 2025, names establishments providing centralized data-processing, storage and management services in the business-use tariff category. The Ministry of Industry and Trade’s May public response gives a narrower operating distinction: a data centre used for the enterprise’s own purposes, without supplying those services to third parties, follows the purpose in its electricity-purchase contract; where the facility serves outside parties, clause 19 applies to that service; and a mixed facility uses agreed electricity-consumption shares. The Ministry said it was still studying guidance after receiving telecom-sector petitions. That published explanation ties the classification to actual service and contract structure, not to the label “AI factory.” The Government lists the Circular as in force. The Ministry’s response sets out its interpretation and pending guidance.

That is why the October request matters before the first servers are installed. If phase one is designed to sell compute to outside clients, the operator and electricity seller need a documented classification and a way to assign consumption. If the facility mixes its own workloads with third-party service, the share matters. The project has not published either its customer contracts or a sub-metering plan, and no authority has publicly stated the tariff it will receive. It would be premature to calculate a power-cost increase.

Price classification is also different from physical power availability. A 50MW IT load is not the same as a 50MW grid connection: cooling, power conversion, redundancy and other facility loads sit outside that figure, and the sources give no PUE or peak-demand profile. Báo Xây dựng says the city has asked agencies to gather each data centre’s design load, peak demand, operating date and expansion plan so supply can be matched by stage. That work can advance while the tariff question remains open, but neither substitutes for the other.

For investors, the test is now documentary. A bankable phase-one model needs an agreed tariff category, a contract that reflects the services actually sold, a measurable allocation for any mixed use, a staged connection plan, and a financing schedule that distinguishes registered value from cash deployed. Until those records exist, US$2.1bn describes the project’s registered scale; it does not price the megawatt-hour or prove that the first phase is ready to operate.

Sources