Oracle to invest over US$6.5 bil in AI, cloud computing in largest such deal for Malaysia

• New cloud region will help M’sian firms modernise, migrate & innovate with AI
• Customers, partners will gain fast cloud access for better data value, secure storage

To meet the rapidly growing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services in Malaysia, Oracle has announced plans to invest more than US$6.5 billion (RM27 billion) to open a public cloud region in the country. In a statement issued from its HQ in Austin, Texas, Oracle said the upcoming cloud region will enable Oracle customers and partners in Malaysia to leverage AI infrastructure and services, and migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Malaysia becomes the second country in SouthEast Asia to host Oracle's public cloud with Singapore hosting two such facilities with the first opening in Nov 2021 and the second which opened in July 2024. It did not release any public estimate of the investment into each of the two facilities unlike its announcement for Malaysia. But it has committed to run both cloud regions in Singapore on 100% renewable energy by 2025. No mention of any timeline for its Malaysian facility.

Oracle offered 100 Singapore based startups US$30,000 each in cloud credits and provided free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure training and certifications for a limited period as well in conjunction with the launch of its Nov 2021 facility. To support its second cloud region, Oracle offered training to several hundred students from five Singapore polytechnics with a promise of jobs at either Oracle, its clients or partners. Oracle has made no such offer yet for its Malaysian investment, although it is possible that such capacity building and support has been factored into its over US$6.5 billion investment. 

[Ed: Para added for background.]

“We welcome Oracle’s US$6.5 billion (RM27 billion) investment in Malaysia, which represents yet another expansion of their 36-year footprint in the country,” said Zafrul Aziz, minister of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI), Malaysia. “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. Oracle’s decision to establish a public cloud region in Malaysia underscores the country’s infrastructure readiness and its growing position as a premier Southeast Asian destination for digital investments.”

“Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organisations looking to accelerate their expansion with the latest digital technologies,” said Garrett Ilg (pic), executive vice president and general manager, Japan & Asia Pacific, Oracle. “Our multi-billion-dollar investment affirms our commitment to Malaysia as a regional gateway for cloud infrastructure, as well as a comprehensive suite of SaaS applications deployed within the country.”

“Rapidly growing demand for AI services prompts the need for more data centres that store large amounts of data and computational power to train and deploy AI models,” said Franco Chiam, vice president of Cloud, Data Centre and Future Digital Infrastructure, Asia Pacific, IDC. “According to IDC FutureScape’s ‘The Infrastructure and Cloud Impact 2024 Predictions,’ Malaysia’s public cloud services market is expected to grow by 27.2 percent 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.”

The planned public cloud region will help organisations in Malaysia modernise their applications, migrate all types of workloads to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics, and AI. Customers will have access to OCI Generative AI Agents with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities, accelerated computing, and generative AI services, which will help keep sovereign AI models within national borders. OCI Supercluster—the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud—will be available with up to 131,072 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, Nvidia ConnectX-7 NICs for RoCEv2 networking, or Nvidia GB200 NVL72 rack solutions using liquid cooling and Nvidia Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking.

In addition, over 150 services, including Oracle Autonomous Database, HeatWave MySQL Database Service, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, OCI Kubernetes Engine, and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, will be available, offering customers infrastructure, platform, or SaaS services.

Oracle claims to be the only hyperscaler capable of delivering AI and a full suite of 150+ cloud services across public, dedicated, and hybrid cloud environments anywhere in the world. The company stated that OCI’s unique cloud architecture enables it to launch more public cloud regions faster by starting with an optimal footprint and scaling as needed, and to deploy dedicated cloud regions with hyperscale cloud services inside customer data centres. This approach helps meet the needs of all countries and markets without compromising cloud capabilities, while also providing the consistent performance, SLAs, and global pricing for which OCI is known.

According to Oracle, with the planned public cloud region in Malaysia, customers and partners will gain low-latency access to cloud services, allowing them to derive better value from their data, securely store it, and run applications to meet regulations and data residency requirements within the country. Additionally, OCI’s sovereign AI capabilities provide customers with increased control over the location of their data and computing infrastructure, enabling them to achieve AI sovereignty by ensuring their use of AI aligns with digital sovereignty frameworks.

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

“Nvidia underpins the world’s largest AI models for training and inference, and Oracle’s continued expansion in Malaysia will help organisations across the country harness the power of AI,” said Dennis Ang, senior director of Enterprise Business (ASEAN and ANZ region), Nvidia. “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.”