Malaysia Well-positioned With AI-ready Data Centres - Juwai IQI

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 3 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is well positioned for a world where artificial intelligence (AI) dominates data centre development, as not all data centres are suitable to support the coming AI boom, said global real estate agency Juwai IQI. 

Co-founder and group chief executive officer Kashif Ansari said data centres built to support enterprise information technology, cloud computing, and general-purpose workloads are not optimised for the higher demands that AI requires.

He said the data centres could lack the power, cooling, and networking requirements for AI.

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“On the other hand, Malaysia has a pipeline of billions of dollars of planned data centres that are largely AI-ready.

“Supportive government initiatives and substantial investments from companies like Nvidia, ByteDance, Google, AWS, and Microsoft have ensured this is the case,” he said in a statement today.

Kashif said that the Malaysian data centre development pipeline consists of 1.2 gigawatts, representing 600 per cent growth over the next five years.

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He said that about 55 per cent of new projects are planned for the Kuala Lumpur area, and the other 45 per cent will go into Johor.

“Data centre builders are tailoring their projects for AI applications.

“Look at YTL Power, whose green data centre park in Johor will incorporate advanced direct-to-chip liquid cooling to enable the high-power densities that AI processing requires,” he added.

Juwai IQI mentioned that Blackstone, one of the world’s largest financial investors in AI infrastructure, viewed that the world will need to spend US$2 trillion (US$1=RM4.47) on data centres over the next five years.

“Malaysia is well positioned to capture a significant share of this growth, and Johor is the fastest-growing Southeast Asian market,” it added.

-- BERNAMA