Google has announced plans to invest US$2 billion in Malaysia. It aims to develop its first data centre in the country, along with a Google Cloud hub.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been widely quoted as saying that the investment is expected to add US$3.2 billion to the economy and create 26,500 jobs by 2030.
There aren’t too many specifics at the moment. However, Google has said in a statement that the new hubs will be developed at a business park in central Malaysia’s Selangor state, which is on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, encircling the capital Kuala Lumpur.
The business park aims to meet growing demand for cloud services and for artificial intelligence literacy programmes for Malaysian students and educators.
Malaysia will be the twelfth country to house a Google data centre. The Malaysian Google Cloud hub — which will deliver services to large enterprises, startups and the public sector – will join 40 regions and 121 zones currently in operation around the world, according to Google.
There’s been an extraordinary amount of investment activity related to telecommunications in recent weeks in Malaysia, notably Microsoft’s recent announcement that it plans to put US$2.2 billion over the next four years into building Malaysia’s new cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
However, other headlines include, to name only a few, the first Apple store in the country, plans for a US$107 billion investment for its semiconductor industry, a deal with Ericsson and Intel and plans to build Southeast Asia’s largest integrated circuit design park.