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Malaysia Seeks Chinese Investment to Build More Data Centers, Economy Minister Says

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Bloomberg Jun 26 11:03 · 6943 Views

Malaysia is in talks with potential Chinese investors to build data centers in the Southeast Asian country, says Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli. The Malaysian government will strengthen its infrastructure offering to attract more tech companies looking to take advantage of the AI boom, Rafizi tells Bloomberg in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Dalian, China.

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  • 00:00 Malaysia, from my understanding, is in a is a very interesting spot
  • 00:05 by attracting investment into the chip industry.
  • 00:09 I mean, I go way back.
  • 00:10 I remember Intel was in Penang from 1972.
  • 00:13 You have a chip
  • 00:14 industry, but you're attracting a lot of the big names, NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft's, you know they're going to be data centers, Byte dance as well.
  • 00:22 What have been the crux of your discussions here in China over those nine days?
  • 00:27 We are looking
  • 00:28 to expedite malicious transition from the existing back end part of the.
  • 00:35 Semiconductor into the front end
  • 00:37 and design design.
  • 00:40 Assembly and data centers
  • 00:42 and
  • 00:44 China has been able to do that quite well
  • 00:48 and it's very much related to the kind of
  • 00:51 innovation that they have been able to roll out with their
  • 00:55 consumer products businesses.
  • 00:58 And
  • 00:59 IC design is very much related to electronics products.
  • 01:05 And we've been talking to companies
  • 01:09 that form.
  • 01:10 The front end design ecosystems
  • 01:14 and.
  • 01:15 And I think
  • 01:16 they also see there's a good fix
  • 01:19 with.
  • 01:20 Malaysia and ASEAN
  • 01:21 because ASEAN is expected to grow to become.
  • 01:25 A strong and big consumer product markers in the next 10-15 years.
  • 01:30 And
  • 01:30 and and the kind of market environment that.
  • 01:35 Lao
  • 01:36 IC designs that you have seen in in China,
  • 01:40 there's also that fit and potential in
  • 01:43 ASEAN
  • 01:44 and Malaysia has a very strong
  • 01:47 foothold in
  • 01:49 semiconductor.
  • 01:50 Do you find yourself in an interesting position as kind of representing the global S in the way of these non aligned countries that are moving up the value chain as you just described,
  • 02:00 but being non aligned to the bifurcated world that we've seen?
  • 02:03 Let's face it, I've I'm sure you've heard this question before between China and the United States.
  • 02:07 You're attracting the likes of Google and NVIDIA, but also the Chinese chip designers.
  • 02:12 Does that put you also at
  • 02:13 potential risk or do you see this as a great advantage?
  • 02:17 It is both
  • 02:18 actually,
  • 02:19 but
  • 02:21 we have been able to build
  • 02:24 our economy.
  • 02:25 In the last 50 years,
  • 02:26 on
  • 02:27 a few
  • 02:29 important philosophy
  • 02:31 that
  • 02:32 we know our place in the world.
  • 02:34 We are a small country,
  • 02:36 but we are also very open and we are fiercely not.
  • 02:40 On a line and therefore we've exited our active neutrality to.
  • 02:45 Make sure that we offer the best value proposition to all our partners.
  • 02:50 And
  • 02:52 over the last 50 years, we've become an important.
  • 02:55 Part of the global supply
  • 02:57 value chain and.
  • 03:00 And
  • 03:00 I think that will
  • 03:02 remain.
  • 03:05 A complicated
  • 03:07 issues to navigate, but we've done it for the last.
  • 03:10 Yeah,
  • 03:11 now I've heard of as well.
  • 03:12 Bytedance for one likes to see Malaysia's perhaps building AAI hub.
  • 03:16 How are you going to be part of the
  • 03:18 AI boom and and supply chain?
  • 03:21 Not only for the American companies, because as I mentioned, NVIDIA,
  • 03:24 a data center, Microsoft, Google and Intel's been there for a long time, but for the Chinese companies, you have
  • 03:29 contracts ready to sign beyond Bytedance and the others.
  • 03:35 We've met by dance,
  • 03:36 of course.
  • 03:37 I think
  • 03:38 the
  • 03:39 focus now is to strengthen
  • 03:43 our infrastructure offering.
  • 03:45 The reason why Malaysia is seen to be very important for AI
  • 03:50 for ASEAN region
  • 03:52 is because our leadership of the.
  • 03:55 Data center industry.
  • 03:56 So apart from Bytons,
  • 03:59 a lot of our discussions
  • 04:01 with
  • 04:01 potential Chinese investors so far
  • 04:04 are those who are planning to build more data centers kit for
  • 04:11 Chinese companies that will be running the LLMS and everything for for ASEAN in in Malaysia.