Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says one of the world’s largest investors has picked Kuching, in Sarawak, and Peninsular Malaysia for $50 billion of spending on artificial intelligence, new technology and data centers. Bloomberg reported that the investor is Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group.
Anwar disclosed the plan in a speech in Melaka on Saturday. “Last Tuesday, one of the world’s largest investors held a video conference with me,” he said, in remarks carried by the national news agency Bernama and published by The Star. He didn’t name the investor or give project details, a timeline or a job count, The Vibes reported. Bloomberg, which put Son’s name to the call, said SoftBank representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.
What SoftBank has put in writing
SoftBank’s own announcement on Sarawak carries no price tag. In Kuching on Oct. 8, Son signed a framework agreement with Grab CEO Anthony Tan and Dato Janin Girie, group CEO of Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (PETROS), to explore an AI and digital infrastructure platform in Sarawak. The three said they would draw up a roadmap for building it in phases and would look at AI compute and services, robotics and local workforce development.
The release spells out its limits. “The Framework Agreement does not obligate the Companies to enter into definitive agreements with respect to, or to implement, the contemplated project,” it says. Its risk factors include the possibility that suitable land, competitively priced and reliable power, connectivity or contracted customer demand will not be secured. PETROS, master developer of the Kuching Low-Carbon Hub, is the partner on the energy side.
Malaysia already has the hyperscalers
The country recorded 385.7 billion ringgit, about $94 billion, of data-center-related investment from 2021 through the first half of 2026, according to Malaysian Investment Development Authority figures cited by Bloomberg. Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google are among the companies that have invested there. The Philippines, one of its neighbors, has a $34.4 billion AI infrastructure masterplan of its own, and electricity has become the hard limit on the region’s build-out, WebProNews reported in September.
For SoftBank, a Malaysian program would sit next to two larger commitments that Bloomberg listed: a $500 billion data-center-focused project in Ohio and a French project that could cost as much as 75 billion euros. At home, its telecom unit is building data centers in Hokkaido and in Sakai, Osaka.
In the same speech, Anwar said workforce training would be needed to move Malaysia beyond back-end technology work into the middle- and front-end segments, which he said offer higher added value. Neither he nor SoftBank has said how the $50 billion would be split between Sarawak and the peninsula.
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