DayOne, a global data center developer based in Singapore, has partnered with Melbourne-based biological computing startup Cortical Labs to build Singapore’s first biological data center. This will be the first facility of its kind outside Australia, the company said in a press release.
Under the partnership, DayOne will provide funding and strategic support, while Cortical Labs will develop a prototype wetware computing platform together with the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore.
Cortical Labs plans to start with an initial setup at NUS, which will include one rack containing 20 Cortical Cloud units.
A biological data center is a computing facility that uses living brain cells (neurons) grown from stem cells to process information, instead of traditional silicon computer chips.
These systems, often called “wetware,” work differently from normal data centers that use power-hungry servers. Instead, they use brain-like organoids, which can process data using much less electricity than traditional digital computers.
“Singapore is raising the bar for sustainable data center growth, and the market is responding with new approaches, beyond just bigger builds,” said Jamie Khoo, CEO of DayOne. “Partnering with Cortical Labs allows us to explore a new compute paradigm that complements Singapore’s and the region’s sustainability-led trajectory, supporting continued innovation while staying aligned to evolving efficiency and greener-energy expectations.”
“Singapore has made it clear that the next chapter of digital infrastructure must be built with sustainability at the core,” said Hon Weng Chong, Founder & CEO, Cortical Labs. “AI is moving from novelty to necessity across every sector, but the region’s energy and water realities are forcing a reckoning. This partnership is about giving policymakers and industry a practical alternative: a sustainable pathway to AI adoption that aims to decouple compute growth from a resource footprint.”
The Singapore Bio Data Center aims to support research and innovation in areas such as drug discovery, biomedical science, energy optimisation, and advanced AI.
The project will use the strong neurobiology research expertise of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore.
The work will be supervised by Rickie Patani, a Professor of Neuroscience at NUS Medicine and Director of the Neurobiology Programme at the NUS Life Sciences Institute. Under his guidance, the cells will be cultured and grown at the NUS Life Sciences Institute.
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