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The investment will fund new data center campuses in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan in addition to the company’s operational facility at Elmina Business Park, according to an announcement by Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Alphabet and Google President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat revealed the plans during a speech at Universiti Malaya. The move comes as demand for digital infrastructure surges with the global rise of artificial intelligence applications.
Construction activities associated with the project are forecast to add an annual average of $1.1 billion to Malaysia’s GDP and generate more than 37,000 local jobs each year during the build phase, Google said. Upon becoming operational the campuses are expected to support over 9,000 jobs annually with compensation averaging 45 percent above the national median wage. These projections were included in the company’s detailed assessment of the investment’s local economic footprint.
Google will incorporate more than one gigawatt of clean energy into the national grid as part of the expansion. The company pledged to fully cover the electricity costs for its data centers as well as the infrastructure expenses to link them to the power network. Its new facilities are designed to achieve a power usage effectiveness of between 1.12 and 1.14, Google stated.
Supporting the data center in Negeri Sembilan, Google has committed funds toward shared water infrastructure including an off-river reservoir and treatment plant that will also benefit local communities. The project, developed with the state government and Syarikat Air Negeri Sembilan, is expected to produce 65 million liters of potable water per day. Gamuda Berhad was selected to construct the facilities which will ultimately be owned by the state.
Four new skilling initiatives form another pillar of the $15 billion plan with the goal of training 800,000 Malaysians by 2031. The programmes target skills in digital technologies and clean energy to create broader economic opportunities. “We are very excited about expanding our digital infrastructure here responsibly, investing in resource stewardship and clean energy initiatives, as well as new skilling programmes to open pathways to economic opportunity for Malaysians across the country,” Porat said.
This announcement builds upon Google’s prior $2 billion commitment to Malaysian digital infrastructure made in 2024, a Bloomberg report indicated. The company initially disclosed intentions to establish a cloud region in Malaysia in 2022 before breaking ground on its first local data center the following year. Several major technology companies have accelerated data center projects in the Southeast Asian nation to capitalise on its supportive policies and growing talent pool.
