Social media platform TikTok is looking into whether it should launch a data center in Australia.
The Information reports that the Chinese-owned company is in talks with suppliers about the potential move to support workloads across the Asia Pacific region.
The plan is still in the very early stages, has not been finalized, and could take years to materialize.
TikTok has markedly expanded its own data center footprint in recent years, both to meet growing demand, and to try to assuage regional governmental concerns about data being sent to China.
In Europe, TikTok operates a data center in Ireland, is building another, and uses a huge Green Mountain facility in Norway.
In the US, after being one of the country's largest consumers of data center space, it began moving to Oracle Cloud in hopes of avoiding a ban after former President Trump tried to block the company.
That effort has so far failed, with President Biden in April declaring that parent ByteDance had to sell TikTok US or cease operations within nine months.
ByteDance is currently fighting the case in court, and claims that no US user data has been sent to China. Last week, however, the DoJ alleged that it had proof of data being stored on China-based servers.
