Google plans to spend $15B in Malaysia in 2027 and 2028 on data centres, cloud operations, water, power and training. It will expand its Selangor campus and build new ones in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, where it is also funding a $160M water plant.
Google plans to spend $15B on data centres and cloud operations in Malaysia in 2027 and 2028, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The money will also go into local water supplies, power generation and training, the company said.
Google will expand its existing campus at Elmina Business Park in Selangor and build new ones in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, Malay Mail reported . The Elmina site came from a $2B investment Google announced in May 2024.
Alphabet chief investment officer Ruth Porat announced the plan at an event in Kuala Lumpur attended by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
“ Our nation possesses the stability, the talent, the ambition to be a premier digital powerhouse in Southeast Asia, ” Anwar said.
Google says building the campuses will support more than 37,000 local jobs a year and add about $1.1B a year to Malaysia’s economy. Once they are running, it expects them to sustain more than 9,000 jobs.
Water is a big part of the deal. Earlier this week, Google said it would fund a $160M reservoir and treatment plant in Negeri Sembilan. It will supply 65 million litres of drinking water a day to the data centre and nearby communities.
Water has become a flashpoint for Google elsewhere. Its $15B India data centre has faced protests over local supplies, and on Indonesia’s Batam island, near Singapore, residents have protested dry taps as data centres spread.
Malaysia has become Southeast Asia’s main data centre hub, thanks to low costs, reliable infrastructure and its closeness to Singapore. Oracle, Amazon, Alibaba and ByteDance are all expanding there. The country has more than 6 GW of planned capacity , the largest pipeline in the region.
More money may follow. In late October, Anwar said SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son plans about $50B of AI investment in Malaysia, though SoftBank has not confirmed the figure.
The deal mirrors one Google made in Europe. In September, it said it would put €13B into Finland over the same two years.
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