Alibaba Cloud amplifies Malaysia infrastructure with public cloud region in Johor to meet growing demand

• US$53 bil AI and cloud investment supports growing enterprise demand
• New Johor cloud region expands Alibaba Cloud’s Malaysian footprint to five data centres

Alibaba Cloud, a leading global provider of AI infrastructure and the intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has announced the launch of a new public cloud region in Johor, Malaysia, with two new data centres established to meet the country’s growing demand for cloud and AI services.

As part of Alibaba’s previously announced US$53 billion (RM225.3 billion) investment in AI and cloud infrastructure in 2025, this expansion brings Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure to 104 availability zones across 32 regions, providing secure, scalable and robust cloud and AI infrastructure to support customers worldwide in their digital innovation journeys.

The launch of the Johor region brings Alibaba Cloud’s total footprint in Malaysia to five data centres, representing its largest infrastructure presence in Southeast Asia to date.

Gobind Singh Deo, minister of Digital, said the expansion strengthens Malaysia’s position as a destination for AI-ready infrastructure and high-value digital investments.

“The addition of Alibaba Cloud’s new data centres in Johor further strengthens Malaysia’s position as a key destination for AI-ready infrastructure and high-value digital investments. This expansion aligns with Malaysia’s cloud-first and AI-driven national agenda, propelling us closer to realising our vision of becoming an AI Nation by 2030 through secure, scalable and future-ready digital infrastructure that enables both industry innovation and public sector transformation,” he said.

The new facilities in Johor offer a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services, including compute, storage, containers, networking, big data, security, databases and cloud-native services.

To meet the growing demand for enterprise agents in the region, Alibaba Cloud also plans to introduce a suite of agentic AI services to Malaysia in the second half of this year.

These products include AgentRun, a one-stop intelligent agent development and build platform; STAROps, a comprehensive intelligent operations platform; ACS Agent Sandbox, which provides hardware-level security isolation while reducing operational costs; Agent Security Center, an integrated defence platform for AI agents; AI Security Guardrails 2.0, an upgraded security solution with end-to-end risk detection capabilities; and Agentic SOC, an enterprise-grade AI agent-driven security operations platform.

The new products are designed to streamline the development and deployment of enterprise-scale agents in a secure environment, providing enterprises with full lifecycle management capabilities.

Since 2017, Alibaba Cloud has been among the earliest global cloud providers to invest in Malaysia, establishing its first twin data centre presence before adding a third facility last year.

Choong Hon Keat, general manager of Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said Malaysia remains a strategic market for the company in Southeast Asia.

“Malaysia remains a strategic key market for us in Southeast Asia, and we are deeply committed to empowering enterprises of all sizes on their cloud and AI journey with our robust and secure cloud and AI technologies.

“This expansion in Malaysia is a direct response to surging customer demand as local businesses scale cloud-native operations and integrate AI at scale. Our new data centres in Johor will enable us to deliver more resilient, low-latency services, helping companies innovate faster, scale securely and operate with greater efficiency in the AI era,” he said.

Building a Robust Ecosystem with Customers and Partners to Thrive in the AI-powered Digital Era

As AI and cloud adoption accelerate, the new data centres enhance Alibaba Cloud’s ability to deliver AI-ready infrastructure to Malaysian businesses, improving resilience, reducing latency and strengthening disaster recovery across Malaysia and Southeast Asia while supporting broader digital transformation goals.

TNG Digital Sdn Bhd (TNGD), the operator of Malaysia’s leading digital financial services and lifestyle app, TNG eWallet, is leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s cloud technologies, including a unified data platform, to enhance its search and recommendation capabilities. The collaboration enables more seamless and personalised user experiences while building a scalable foundation for future innovation.

“Through our partnership with Alibaba Cloud, we are strengthening the technology foundation that enables us to deliver more intuitive and localised experiences for our users. By bringing together data and search capabilities within a unified platform, we can accelerate innovation more efficiently while simplifying operational complexity as we continue to scale our digital ecosystem,” Leslie Lip, chief technology officer of TNG Digital Sdn Bhd, said.

YTL AI Labs, a technology subsidiary of YTL Corporation, has deepened its long-running collaboration with Alibaba Cloud’s AI scientists and architects, a partnership that has produced the ILMU family of models alongside a growing product suite comprising Ryt AI for Ryt Bank, ILMUchat, ILMU Claw and the ILMU API Platform for developers building their own applications.

The ILMU models have demonstrated strong performance in Malay-language multitask understanding across text, image and voice. Since September 2024, YTL AI Labs has continued to leverage Alibaba Cloud’s advanced cloud infrastructure to build and run complex AI agents for critical environments.

“Our long-term partnership with Alibaba Cloud has enabled us to accelerate our AI research and development, especially in advancing Malay-language AI models. By leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure and AI capabilities, we are making meaningful progress in building localised AI solutions tailored to Malaysia’s digital landscape,” Foong Chee Mun, CEO of YTL AI Labs, said.

AI-powered creative platforms Morphyx.io and TabSpace.ai are leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s video generation models including Wan2.7, and HappyHorse through Model Studio to power next-generation visual and video generation, streamline production pipelines, and significantly reduce turnaround times and costs while enabling rapid generation of high-quality, rights-cleared creative assets. 

In addition, Morphyx.io extends its AI capabilities through Qwen LLM for script generation, translation, and speech-related workflows, strengthening its end-to-end unified creative studio offering.

“Through our collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, we are reimagining how creative content is produced at scale. By leveraging AI-driven tools across the production workflow, we are able to significantly shorten production cycles, reduce costs, and unlock new levels of creative flexibility for brands.” said TJ Tham, founder & CEO, TabSpace.ai. 

“Working with Alibaba Cloud allows us to rapidly scale our creative AI capabilities by embedding cutting-edge models directly into our platform, helping creators move from imagination to production faster and more intelligently.” Sham Yunus, Founder, Morphyx.io said.