Oracle to invest $6.5bn in AI and cloud computing in Malaysia

5 hours ago

FinanceAsia

The tech giant plans to open a cloud region to help boost the country’s digital economy, where the government wants to enhance its AI capabilities and to create 3,000 smart factories by 2030.

October 03, 2024

Oracle has announced plans to invest more than $6.5 billion to open a public cloud region in Malsyais, as demand grows for artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services. The upcoming cloud region, Oracle’s twelfth in Asia Pacific (Apac) will enable Oracle customers and partners in Malaysia to leverage AI infrastructure and services and migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

The planned public cloud region will help Malaysian firms modernise their applications, migrate all workload to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics, and AI, according to a company media release.

Customers will have access to OCI Generative AI Agents with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities; accelerated computing and generative AI services to help keep sovereign AI models within country borders; and the OCI Supercluster, a large AI supercomputer in the cloud, the release said. In addition, over1 50 other services will be made available.

“We warmly welcome Oracle’s $6.5 billion investment in Malaysia, which represents yet another expansion of their 36-year footprint in Malaysia,” said YB senator Tengku Datuk Seri Utama Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, minister of investment, trade and industry (MITI), Malaysia.

The minister added: “This investment will empower Malaysian entities, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, with innovative and cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies to enhance their global competitiveness. It is also a significant step towards realising the country’s New Industrial Master Plan’s ambitious vision of creating 3,000 smart factories by 2030."

Smart factories consist of cyber-physical systems that use AI and machine learning to analyse data, drive automated processes and 'learn as it goes', accroding to SAP.

“Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organisations looking to accelerate their expansion with the latest digital technologies,” said Garrett Ilg, executive vice president and general manager, Japan & Asia Pacific, Oracle.

Growing demand

The move by Oracle comes amid growing demand for AI and data centres in Asia Pacific (Apac), with Blackstone's $24 billion recent deal for Sydney-headquartered AirTrunk one such example.

“Rapidly growing demand for AI services prompts calls for more data centres that store large amounts of data and computational power to train and deploy AI models,” said Franco Chiam, vice president, cloud, data center and future digital infrastructure, Apac, IDC.

Chiam added: “According to IDC FutureScape ‘The Infrastructure and Cloud Impact 2024 Predictions’, Malaysia’s public cloud services market is expected to grow by 27.2% CAGR from 2022 to 2027. The upcoming Oracle cloud region in Malaysia, therefore, signals the country’s potential to become a hub for technological innovation and growth in Southeast Asia.”

Several Nvidia AI infrastructure services will be available to customers via Oracle, including Nvidia AI Enterprise, Nvidia Omniverse, and Nvidia DGX Cloud.

Dennis Ang, senior director, enterprise business, (Asean and ANZ region), Nvidia, said: “With the new Oracle Cloud Malaysia Region, customers in Malaysia will gain local access to Nvidia’s accelerated, secure, and scalable platform for end-to-end AI development and deployment on OCI, helping accelerate the development of generative AI applications.”

Companies Southeast Asia #oracle #malaysia #cloud computing #artificial intelligence