TVB City has room for a few server racks (Image: Dragages)
Fund manager Gaw Capital Partners is planning to to build an AI hub in Hong Kong’s Sai Kung district through a joint venture with local broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), according to an announcement on Monday.
The partners have signed a heads of agreement under which the Hong Kong private equity firm would inject up to HK$2 billion ($254.9 million) into a joint venture to develop computing facilities within TVB’s campus in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate, procuring graphics processing units (GPUs) and other equipment to sell AI-related computing services to outside customers as well as for use by TVB group companies.
TVB would own 51 percent of the new company, with Gaw Capital holding the remaining 49 percent, according to a TVB filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, with the partners targeting about 10,000 PetaFLOPS of computing power — a measure of raw processing speed — for the first phase of the project, which would begin operating in the fourth quarter of 2027.
TVB announced the potential deal about a month before a five-day window opens for Cardy Oval Limited, an investment vehicle controlled by Gaw Capital founder Goodwin Gaw, to demand early redemption of a HK$156 million convertible bond in the broadcaster at 110 percent of face value. The Gaw-controlled entity also has an option to convert that 2023 bond into as much as a 7.41 percent stake in TVB. The broadcaster’s shares jumped as much as 10 percent in early trading Monday following the announcement.
New Territories of AI
The partners intend to fund development of the AI facility through a mix of Gaw Capital’s equity, financing from banks and TVB’s own resources, TVB said in its filing. The broadcaster is applying for approval from government agencies to pursue the project, while the partners are separately in talks with local utility CLP Holdings Limited over electricity supply for the computing facilities and with equipment vendors over GPU procurement.
Goodwin Gaw, founder and chairman of Gaw Capital Partners
As part of the tie-up, Gaw Capital may also subscribe for new TVB shares, warrants or convertible notes, on terms still to be agreed. Any such subscription would be subject to the signing of definitive agreements for the joint venture and to Hong Kong listing rules, including shareholder approval where required.
The joint venture and the potential subscription are both non-binding and subject to government approval, TVB said, with no final agreement having yet been reached.
The relationship between the partners dates to 2023, when Cardy Oval subscribed to a HK$156 million convertible bond from the broadcaster just days after TVB reported a HK$410 million loss, citing falling revenues.
The five-year bond carries a 3.5 percent coupon and converts at HK$4.45 per share, a premium of about 13 percent to TVB’s closing price at the time. Full conversion would give Cardy Oval as much as a 7.41 percent stake in the broadcaster.
The bond remains outstanding and unconverted, according to TVB’s 2025 annual results announcement, and had a total carrying value of HK$185 million as of 31 December. TVB reclassified the bond from a non-current to a current liability in that filing and Cardy Oval has a five-business-day window opening on the bond’s third anniversary — around 6 September — to demand early redemption at 110 percent of face value plus accrued interest, rather than converting into shares, according to the announcement.
“I thank Mr. Goodwin Gaw for his investment, and his statement of confidence,” TVB executive chairman Thomas Hui said when the bond deal was announced, welcoming Gaw as a stakeholder in the company’s digital transformation. Hui remains TVB’s executive chairman and is a signatory to Monday’s announcement.
Network in Transition
“The company is pursuing the above initiatives as part of our ongoing strategic transformation from traditional TV broadcaster to diversified media company for the digital era, and to broaden our revenue streams,” TVB said in its filing.
In Monday’s announcement TVB also disclosed that, together with Gaw Capital, it had last month signed a letter of intent to supply computing services to an unnamed global technology group.
Negotiations on technical and commercial terms of the AI joint venture are ongoing with the parties expecting to sign definitive agreements in the second half of this year.
Operating five broadcast channels in Hong Kong, TVB’s core broadcasting business is under pressure, with revenue falling 2 percent year-on-year to HK$3.2 billion in 2025, although the company returned to profitability after seven consecutive years of losses. TVB said it is also exploring AI tools to let external content creators access its content library and improve production efficiency, pointing to its rising output of AI-generated content.
TVB built its 110,000-square-metre (1.2-million-square-foot) Tseung Kwan O campus, known as TVB City, in 2003 for a total investment of HK$2.2 billion — nearly matching the sum Gaw Capital would pledge to develop computing facilities on the site under the potential JV.
Beyond Racks
The proposed joint venture marks a shift away from Gaw Capital’s wholesale data centre playbook, under which the fund manager has invested in data centre buildings and power-and-cooling infrastructure while tenants supply their own servers and pay for rack and power capacity.
Favouring tie-ups with experienced operators, Gaw Capital in August last year broke ground on the first phase of an 80 megawatt data centre campus in Fuchu City, west of Tokyo, in a project together with GDS-linked DayOne, with that 18 megawatts project targeted for structural completion by mid-2027.
In February 2025, Gaw Capital opened the 5.2 megawatt first phase of a data centre on the Indonesian island of Batam, near Singapore, through Golden Digital Gateway, its joint venture with Sinar Primera Group, an industrial developer linked to Jakarta’s Sinar Mas conglomerate.
