China's TikTok Parent Company to Invest 3 Trillion Won in Malaysia AI Infrastructure

Chinese ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, plans to invest approximately 10 billion ringgit (about 2.9 trillion won) to establish an artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Malaysia, the Malaysian Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry announced.

On the 8th (local time), ByteDance reportedly decided to invest 1.5 billion ringgit in Johor, southern Malaysia, to expand its data center, according to major foreign media.

Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia's Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, stated on X (formerly Twitter) that ByteDance's investment "will help achieve the goal of growing Malaysia's digital economy to 22.6% of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025."

On the 30th of last month, Google announced it would invest 2 billion dollars in Malaysia to build data centers and cloud facilities. This is the largest investment by Google in Southeast Asian countries.

Microsoft (MS), which competes with Google in fields such as AI, also plans to invest 2.2 billion dollars each over the next four years in Malaysia's cloud and AI infrastructure.