ByteDance's exclusive dedicated data center is about to launch its IPO.

Amid the booming AI infrastructure IPO wave, a new player is about to join the queue.

DayOne Data Centers (DayOne), a Singapore-headquartered data center operator, has recently filed an F-1 registration statement with the U.S. SEC for a planned Nasdaq listing. According to Bloomberg, DayOne's IPO could raise up to 50 billion U.S. dollars (equivalent to over 330 billion yuan), with an estimated valuation of around 200 billion U.S. dollars (over 1.33 trillion yuan). DayOne stated that it plans to use part of the proceeds from the IPO to develop new data center projects.

Among this batch of AI infrastructure companies rushing to the capital market, DayOne may seem relatively unknown at first glance, compared with Nscale which is highly tied to Microsoft's orders and Firmus which has received multiple rounds of financing from NVIDIA. However, backed by large orders from its star major client, TikTok under ByteDance, DayOne is fully qualified to sit at the table with all industry peers.

However, the current moment does not seem to be a good timing for listing. As the capital market's attitude towards the AI track shifts from enthusiasm to rationality, the listing processes of AI infrastructure unicorns including Nscale and Firmus have stagnated or even been interrupted one after another recently. The suspension of Firmus's IPO is the most dramatic: it took less than 48 hours for Firmus to go from officially launching investor subscription inquiry to withdrawing its IPO application, and its valuation of 204.6 billion yuan collapsed instantly. If you are interested, you can check the article "48 Hours: The $30.6 Billion IPO Is Called Off".

In short, DayOne is embarking on a journey against the wind right now, and its listing prospect is far from clear. Sure enough, on October 21 Beijing time, just a few days after DayOne submitted its filing, it released another statement indicating that it may postpone the listing or reduce the offering size, and the final IPO scale may be shrunk to raise about 2.5 to 3 billion U.S. dollars, roughly half of its original target.

ByteDance's Exclusive Data Center Service Provider

Just like NVIDIA to Microsoft and TSMC to NVIDIA, there is always a type of company in the technology industry that grows up relying on a deeply bonded symbiotic relationship with large clients. For ByteDance, DayOne is exactly such a role.

The story dates back to its predecessor.

DayOne was originally registered in the Cayman Islands under the name DigitalLand Holdings Limited (GDS International), which was an overseas business subsidiary of GDS when it was established.

Founded in 2001, GDS is the absolute leader in China's third-party data center track. Market tracking data from international data agency IDC and China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that among China's third-party data center market excluding the three basic telecom operators, GDS has long ranked first steadily with a market share of nearly 20%. Since 2014, GDS has reached its first cooperation with Tencent and Alibaba. In 2020, ByteDance first appeared on GDS's client list.

After 2020, Chinese internet companies collectively expanded overseas, and GDS also extended its business to Southeast Asia.

In 2022, the consumer spending of TikTok Shop users in Southeast Asia increased more than four times to 4.4 billion U.S. dollars. It was also in this year that GDS International was established, specifically responsible for GDS's future new data center development in regions including China's Hong Kong, Singapore, Johor in Malaysia and Batam Island in Indonesia.

Theoretically, GDS International, as an infrastructure provider, only needs to play a good role of "data landlord". However, as geopolitical tensions intensified, TikTok faced rising regulatory pressure overseas, and the market environment changed, GDS accordingly spun off GDS International independently.

In 2024, GDS International introduced external capital and successively completed Series A and Series B financing totaling about 1.9 billion U.S. dollars. After equity dilution, by the end of 2024, GDS's shareholding ratio dropped to 35.6%, and it no longer held controlling interest in GDS International, which was no longer included in GDS's consolidated statements. On January 1, 2025, GDS International was officially renamed DayOne and completely became an independent entity.

At present, Coatue Capital, GL Ventures and GDS hold 19.5%, 19.5% and 19.4% of DayOne's shares respectively. DayOne's business is also developing in multiple regions around the world. According to the prospectus, the company currently has 4.6 GW of resources, of which 2.3 GW of reservations mainly come from seven global hyperscale and leading technology clients. Its market coverage not only includes the SIJORI region (Singapore, Johor in Malaysia and Riau Islands in Indonesia), Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Bangkok in Thailand, Kyushu in Japan, but also Helsinki in Finland and Zaragoza in Spain.

However, behind the aggressive global expansion, DayOne's core business base is still highly concentrated.

In 2025 and the first half of 2026, DayOne's revenue reached 484 million U.S. dollars (equivalent to 3.5 billion yuan) and 512 million U.S. dollars (equivalent to 3.7 billion yuan) respectively, of which revenue from the Malaysian market accounted for as high as 81.5% and 87.0% respectively. Meanwhile, revenue contributed by its largest single client accounted for as high as 69.4% and 69.2% respectively.

Combined with the description of its largest client in the prospectus as "a technology company that owns a global short-video platform", and reports from The Information, it is still ByteDance, DayOne's long-time client dating back to the GDS era, that generates nearly 70% of DayOne's revenue. As of September, ByteDance has committed to purchasing 838 MW of installed capacity from DayOne's power stations located in Malaysia, Thailand and Finland.

To some extent, DayOne's global expansion is also closely following the footprint of ByteDance's overseas business.

Take the European market as an example. In response to the EU's strict data compliance regulations, TikTok launched the famous "Clover Plan". As part of the plan, since 2025, TikTok has successively announced to invest in the construction of two data centers in Kouvola and Lahti, Finland, with a total amount of 2 billion euros. This exactly echoes DayOne's business layout in Finland — in the prospectus, DayOne revealed that it has developed a dual-campus solution with a total capacity of 281 MW in Kouvola and Lahti since 2025, and stated that: "This solution has been fully reserved by the client."

Can It Still Raise Enough Capital?

Backed by ByteDance's "full-coverage order", DayOne's performance has achieved rapid growth, but with nearly 70% of revenue contributed by its largest client, its revenue structure is obviously far from healthy.

A set of data for comparison: Although DayOne's former parent company and current third-largest shareholder GDS also highly relies on orders from large internet giants, from 2023 to 2025, the revenue contribution from GDS's largest single client was only around 30%.

To alleviate the over-reliance on a single client, DayOne is actively expanding its client base. According to the prospectus, the revenue proportion of DayOne's second-largest client reached 12.3% and 15.1% respectively in 2025 and the first half of 2026. According to media reports, this second-largest client is exactly Oracle, with which the company announced cooperation in 2025.

DayOne is also cooperating with new-generation AI cloud service providers. In June this year, Firmus, the Australian AI infrastructure company supported by NVIDIA, announced that it will cooperate with DayOne to build a new data center on Batam Island, Indonesia, with plans to deploy at least 170,000 advanced server chips. According to previous news, Meta will become the core tenant of this Southeast Asian infrastructure. According to The Information, ByteDance's order revenue proportion in DayOne's future contracts for 2027 has dropped to below 50%.

Gradual diversification of client structure is the only way for every growing company, which may not be the biggest trouble for DayOne. The real test is the sharply deteriorating capital market environment.

"Burning cash" is almost the fate of data center companies. From land acquisition and power resource procurement to computer room construction, power supply and cooling system deployment, and then to client equipment deployment, data center projects usually require huge upfront capital expenditure to obtain stable cash flow in the future. Even after the projects are put into operation, depreciation, maintenance and financing costs will always exist. Therefore, continuous operating losses and successive rounds of financing activities have almost become the norm in this track.

From 2024 to 2025, DayOne's revenue increased by 171.9% year on year, and in the first half of 2026, the company's revenue growth rate expanded to about 238%. However, behind the surging revenue, DayOne has been in a loss state all the time. As of June 30, DayOne's total outstanding debt has reached 4.9 billion U.S. dollars.

DayOne also stated directly in its prospectus: "To date, our operating cash flow has been far less than our capital requirements. To grow our business, we have raised substantial funds and are seeking to raise more capital through this offering."

But the problem is that the market environment has changed.

Over the past three years, amid the frenzy of AI infrastructure, tech giants including Amazon and Google have successively issued huge new debts, and data center companies have launched round after round of financing sprees. To grab a ticket for the AI era, "borrowing money for growth" has almost become an unwritten rule of the industry. However, as huge capital expenditure continues to accumulate, the gap between massive investment and the still far-away return on investment begins to emerge. Coupled with the new round of interest rate hike cycle, the capital market's expectation for AI infrastructure companies is inevitably becoming more prudent.

Several recent IPO cases are sufficient to reflect the market sentiment:

On October 19, according to Bloomberg, Nscale's IPO valuation target encountered opposition from investors. In view of the recent shelving of Firmus's listing plan, some investors have sharply lowered the reasonable valuation expectation of Nscale to 16 to 19 billion U.S. dollars, which is far from the original 30 billion U.S. dollars it sought.

As the reference case for Nscale's valuation cut, Firmus officially canceled its IPO plan in Australia on October 9. At that time, investors expressed concerns about its 30.6 billion U.S. dollars valuation, huge debt, and the lock-up arrangement for existing investors. In addition, recently, AirTrunk, a data center operator under Blackstone, also reported the news of suspending its Singapore REIT listing.

A large part of the reason for Firmus's IPO failure comes from its excessively exaggerated valuation: according to the prospectus, in fiscal year 2026, Firmus's revenue was only 51 million U.S. dollars, with a net loss of 68.2 million U.S. dollars. The actual operating data center scale of the company is only 46 MW, which is far from the planned 1.6 GW target. Compared with its current revenue scale, Firmus's IPO valuation of over 30 billion U.S. dollars corresponds to an astonishing price-to-sales ratio of over 600 times.

Compared with Firmus whose valuation is seriously overdrawn, DayOne seems to be more "pragmatic" no matter in terms of revenue volume or landed data center assets, but is this enough to escort it to successfully complete its listing against the headwind?

This article is from the WeChat official account "Dongsi Shi Tiao Capital", written by Li Xinting, and authorized for release by 36Kr.