ByteDance To Invest $2.1B in Malaysia for AI, Minister Says

China’s ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, intends to invest approximately 10 billion ringgit ($2.13 billion) to establish an artificial intelligence hub in Malaysia, according to the country’s trade minister on Friday

According to Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry, ByteDance will make an additional investment of 1.5 billion ringgit in order to expand its data center facilities in the state of Johor in Malaysia.

This initiative will be carried out in order to meet the growing demand for data center services. Specifically, ByteDance was the source of this information. It is intended that these actions be carried out in order to make the growth in addition easier to accomplish.

The development of this agreement is the most recent in a series of actions that have been evolving in this fashion. Global technology businesses have been expanding their operations into Southeast Asia, and this agreement is the most recent in this series of activities.

“This additional investment by ByteDance will undoubtedly help Malaysia achieve its target of growing the digital economy to 22.6% of Malaysia’s gross domestic product by 2025,” Tengku Zafrul remarked in a post that was published on X.

The disclosure of this particular investment was prompted by the fact that other digital firms have made major investments in Malaysia that are equivalent to those that have been made in the most recent months. This was the fuel for the announcement.

Microsoft announced that it will invest $2.2 billion to expand cloud and artificial intelligence services, while Google announced that it intended to invest $2 billion to establish its first data center and Google Cloud region in Malaysia.

Both of these announcements were made by Microsoft. Microsoft is the company that made both of these announcements as well. There was a simultaneous announcement of both of these items that took place at the same moment.

There has been no new information regarding any of these situations since the announcement that was made one month ago.