The Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia has received billions of dollars in new investment from US Big Tech, becoming the region’s latest effort to capitalize on the AI boom.
Oracle announced on Wednesday that it will invest at least $6.5 billion in Malaysia’s public cloud region. A cloud region is a real-world location where cloud facilities are located. Oracle said the new facility will enable Malaysian customers to leverage AI services and help Malaysian organizations modernize their digital applications.
“Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organizations looking to accelerate business expansion with the latest digital technologies,” Garrett Ilg, Oracle’s executive vice president and general manager, Japan and Asia Pacific, said in a statement. “
Malaysia’s Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry said Oracle’s investment will support the country’s ambitious plan to create 3,000 smart factories by 2030.
Oracle’s cloud investment follows similar scale promises from Amazon. In late August, the company’s cloud computing arm in the US committed to investing $6.2 billion in Malaysia. Microsoft and Google also announced multibillion dollar investments in cloud infrastructure in Malaysia.
Malaysia is working to establish itself as a technology hub in Southeast Asia. In addition to data centres, Malaysia is also calling for investment in semiconductors to move up the chip supply chain.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Tuesday at the groundbreaking ceremony for Google’s new $2 billion data center complex that the country is working on a national cloud office and AI strategy. The US company claims the investment will create 26,500 jobs and generate $3.2 billion in economic activity by 2030.
Southeast Asia cloud investment
Other Southeast Asian economies are also attracting cloud-related investment.
In May, Amazon pledged to invest $9 billion in Singapore’s existing cloud infrastructure by 2028. The Southeast Asian city-state has been a regional data hub for U.S. companies since 2010.
Google announced Monday that it will invest $1 billion to build new data centers in Thailand and expand its cloud infrastructure in the country. Microsoft also said in May that it was making “significant efforts” to build new cloud and AI infrastructure in Thailand, according to CEO Satya Nadella.
Microsoft has also committed $1.7 billion in cloud and AI-related investments in Indonesia.
The investment in data centers in Southeast Asia is part of a global push to invest in computing capacity to power new AI services. Last month, a consortium of companies including Microsoft and BlackRock pledged to mobilize $100 billion in capital to invest in new data centers.
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