Google will invest $15 billion in Malaysia between 2027 and 2028 to expand its digital infrastructure, develop clean energy capacity and support technology skills development, according to reporting by Reuters.
The commitment, made at an AI event in Kuala Lumpur, will fund new data centre campuses in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, alongside further development of Google’s existing campus at Elmina Business Park in Selangor, which is already operational.
Reuters reported that Google expects the construction of the campuses to contribute an average of $1.1 billion a year to Malaysia’s gross domestic product and support more than 37,000 local jobs annually during the construction phase.
Once operational, the facilities are expected to support more than 9,000 local jobs each year, with wages averaging 45 per cent above the national median, the newswire reported.
“This investment aligns with Malaysia’s development priorities, providing the foundational computing capacity to deliver the upside of innovation across the country while adding local power and water resources as our operations scale,” Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer at Alphabet and Google, said at the event.
Google also plans to add more than one gigawatt of clean energy capacity to Malaysia’s national grid as part of the investment. Reuters reported the company will pay for all electricity used by its data centre campuses and the direct infrastructure costs required to connect them to the grid.
According to Reuters, Google’s Malaysian campuses will operate with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of between 1.12 and 1.14, a measure of data centre energy efficiency.
Alongside infrastructure investment, Google announced plans for four new programmes aimed at training 800,000 Malaysians over the next five years. The investment forms part of Google’s wider expansion of its global data centre network as demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure continues to increase.
