The Wave Of High-Tech FDI Into Vietnam Continues To Rise

In the first months of the year, Vietnam’s high-tech foreign direct investment (FDI) landscape has become increasingly vibrant, marked by a series of new projects and large-scale investment expansion plans. The new investment wave is heavily concentrated in sectors such as data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, and research & development (R&D) – all of which are core foundations of the digital economy. Numerous large-scale projects are being launched or expanded in key localities such as Ho Chi Minh City, Thai Nguyen, and Phu Tho, demonstrating Vietnam’s growing position as an attractive destination for high-tech capital flows in the region.

Capturing The New Wave Of FDI

During the first five months of 2026, Vietnam attracted many large-scale high-tech projects, reflecting improvements in the quality of FDI inflows as well as the country’s strategy of selecting projects that bring advanced technologies, high added value, and spillover effects for domestic enterprises.

According to data from the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Finance, total registered FDI in Vietnam reached USD 24.81 billion in the first five months of 2026, up 34.9% year-on-year. Among all sectors, manufacturing and processing continued to lead in attracting foreign investment with USD 15.01 billion, an increase of 44.3% compared to the same period last year, accounting for more than 60% of total registered capital.

Notably, Ho Chi Minh City has recently emerged as one of the leading localities driving this trend. At the end of April 2026 alone, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee granted investment registration certificates to four high-tech projects in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park, with a combined investment value exceeding USD 1.23 billion.

Among these were two hyperscale data center projects worth nearly USD 1 billion in total, including the Evolution DC VN HCMC Data Center project (with an investment capital of more than USD 508 million), invested by a consortium of Singaporean investors including Hathor, Frontier, and Evolution Data Centres, as well as the Starmason Data Center Complex project (worth more than USD 480 million), developed by Starmason Joint Stock Company.

At the same time, the city has also witnessed the emergence of large-scale AI projects. In March 2026, a joint venture between Accelerated Infrastructure Capital (AIC), Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corporation (KBC), and international partners announced an investment in an AI data center project at Tan Phu Trung Industrial Park.

With a total investment of approximately USD 2.1 billion, the project includes a data center, synchronized technical infrastructure, and GPU systems serving AI applications. In its initial phase, the project will develop a 50 MW AI factory, equivalent to around 28,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), providing computing capacity for AI and high-performance computing demands from both domestic and international customers.

Not only Ho Chi Minh City, but many other provinces are also attracting high-value high-tech projects. In Thai Nguyen, POSCO Future M, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Posco Group, has invested USD 282 million to build a factory producing artificial graphite cathode materials for the lithium-ion battery industry. Once operational, the plant is expected to reach a maximum capacity of 46,000 tons of products per year.

Meanwhile, in Phu Tho Province, China’s BYD Group has decided to inject an additional USD 479 million into the BYD Vietnam Electronics Factory project, raising the total investment capital to USD 890 million. This move reflects the confidence of major technology corporations in Vietnam’s development prospects within the global electronics supply chain.

Preparing The Environment To Attract FDI

According to experts, in the coming period, the quality of FDI inflows will become more important than merely the scale of capital attraction. Projects with high technological content and significant complexity in sectors such as electronics, AI, semiconductors, digital infrastructure, and advanced industrial services are expected to generate long-term added value for the economy.

Beyond expanding supply chains, these investments also promote technology transfer, improve workforce skills, enhance innovation capacity, and strengthen the ability of Vietnamese enterprises to participate more deeply in global value chains.

However, to maintain its attractiveness for high-tech projects, Vietnam must further improve its competitiveness in investment attraction. According to Mr. Mickaël Driol, CEO of Mekong Partners, the key factor lies not only in preferential policies but also in policy consistency and effective implementation in practice.

In particular, establishing clear roadmaps for land access, technical infrastructure, utility infrastructure, and project approval procedures would help reduce uncertainty and shorten implementation timelines for foreign investors.

In addition, energy planning must stay ahead of development demand, especially as data center, AI, and high-tech manufacturing projects require large-scale and stable power supplies. This creates pressure to accelerate renewable energy development, upgrade electricity transmission systems, and ensure long-term energy security.

Furthermore, close coordination among localities will become increasingly important as more multinational corporations adopt multi-location development strategies in Vietnam. According to Mr. Driol, in this new stage of development, Vietnam must strengthen its competitiveness in attracting high-quality FDI not only through commitments on paper, but through the ability to implement those commitments consistently, effectively, and on a large scale.

“In the new stage of development, Vietnam will need to enhance its competitiveness in attracting high-quality FDI not only through commitments, but through the capacity to deliver on those commitments consistently and at scale,” Mr. Driol emphasized.