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Google to Invest $15B in Malaysian Data Centres by 2028

Google will spend $15 billion in Malaysia in 2027 and 2028 on data centres, cloud operations, water, power and training, expanding its Selangor campus and adding a new site.

Aerial view of a large Google data centre campus with cooling equipment in Selangor, Malaysia.
Image: TNW | Artificial-intelligence
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Google plans to invest $15 billion in Malaysia across 2027 and 2028, with the money going to data centres, cloud operations, local water supplies, power generation and training, the company said.

Alphabet chief investment officer Ruth Porat announced the plan at an event in Kuala Lumpur attended by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Google will expand its existing campus at Elmina Business Park in Selangor, which grew out of a $2 billion investment announced in May 2024, and build new campuses in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. "Our nation possesses the stability, the talent, the ambition to be a premier digital powerhouse in Southeast Asia," Anwar said.

Jobs and economic impact

Google says construction of the campuses will support more than 37,000 local jobs a year and add about $1.1 billion annually to Malaysia's economy. Once operating, the sites are expected to sustain more than 9,000 jobs.

Water in focus

Water is a central part of the package. Earlier this week Google said it would fund a $160 million reservoir and treatment plant in Negeri Sembilan, supplying 65 million litres of drinking water a day to the data centre and nearby communities.

The issue has proved sensitive elsewhere. Google's $15 billion data centre project in India has faced protests over local supplies, and residents of Indonesia's Batam island, near Singapore, have protested dry taps as data centres multiply.

A regional hub

Malaysia has become Southeast Asia's main data centre hub, helped by low costs, reliable infrastructure and proximity to Singapore. Oracle, Amazon, Alibaba and ByteDance are all expanding there, and the country has more than 6 GW of planned capacity, the largest pipeline in the region.

More investment may follow. In late October, Anwar said SoftBank's Masayoshi Son plans about $50 billion of AI investment in Malaysia, though SoftBank has not confirmed the figure. Google's commitment also mirrors one in Europe, where it said in September it would put €13 billion into Finland over the same two years.

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Tags:googlemalaysiadata centrescloudalphabetsoutheast asia

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