SoftBank Group plans $50 billion of investments in Malaysia focused on artificial intelligence, new technologies and data centers, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said.
Zoom in: Anwar said on Saturday that Masayoshi Son had identified locations in Kuching, Sarawak and in peninsular Malaysia following a video call between the two earlier in the week, per a Bloomberg report. SoftBank has yet to respond to a request for comment.
By the numbers: For scale, Google committed $2 billion in 2024 for its first Malaysian data center and cloud region, Amazon Web Services planned $6.2 billion through 2038, and Microsoft announced $2.2 billion. SoftBank's figure is larger than all three combined by more than four times.
- Malaysia recorded 385.7 billion ringgit, about $94 billion, in data center investment between 2021 and the first half of 2026, per the Malaysian Investment Development Authority.
The backstory: The government launched a national AI action plan this year with a goal of becoming an "AI nation" by 2030. Earlier this month SoftBank signed a framework agreement with Singapore's Grab and Malaysia's Petroleum Sarawak Berhad to explore AI computing services and digital infrastructure in Sarawak.
- The Sarawak agreement covers AI computing services and advanced technologies, which is the same stack SoftBank is funding through its US data center commitments.
The big picture: Google, Amazon and Microsoft each arrived in Malaysia with single-digit billions and a decade-long horizon. SoftBank is proposing to put in five times that, in a country whose own stated target is to be an AI nation inside four years.
Why it matters: Where the compute gets built shapes which governments set the rules for it. A $50 billion private commitment to one mid-size economy is a large vote against the assumption that frontier AI capacity stays in the US and Europe.
