Anyone in the Klang Valley with an interest in artificial intelligence has somewhere to be this week. AI Malaysia Takeover 2026, or AIMTO_26, runs on 11 and 12 August at The Campus in Ampang, and it is pitched less as a conference to sit and watch and more as an event to take part in, from hands-on training to a public exhibition floor.
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Dinesh Raj chevron_right
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Inside AI Malaysia Takeover 2026
The two-day event is organised by Ludic Asia and 500 Global, and supported by the Ministry of Digital and MyDIGITAL Corporation as strategic partner. It follows the ASEAN AI Malaysia Summit 2025, which drew more than 10,000 participants and convened digital ministers from six ASEAN countries. Where last year leaned on high-level policy talk, the 2026 edition is built around practical skills, ecosystem building and getting more Malaysians actually using AI tools.
The speaker line-up reflects that mix of government, investment and industry. Confirmed names include Gobind Singh Deo, the Minister of Digital; Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahril Hamdan of Kelas Sekejap; Dr Rainer Deutschmann, group chief strategy and transformation officer at Axiata; Paul Copplestone, chief executive of Supabase; Khailee Ng, managing partner at 500 Global; and Foong Chee Mun, chief executive of YTL AI Labs.
A record attempt built around upskilling
The centrepiece is billed as Malaysia's largest AI Learn-A-Thon, a mass training session that will double as an official Malaysia Book of Records attempt. It is co-organised by 500 Global, Ludic Asia, Malaysia AI Residency and KrackedDevs, with YTL AI Labs supplying AI compute credits through its Ilmu Chat platform. The sessions cover frontier AI tools, prompt engineering, workflow automation and real-world deployment, aimed at students, working professionals, business owners and local developers rather than specialists alone. The organisers say it aligns with the Ministry of Digital's Rakyat Digital upskilling framework.
The event also carries a government milestone. Gobind Singh Deo is due to launch a new Rakyat Digital portal, a single platform for digital learning and AI resources led by the Ministry of Digital and implemented by MyDIGITAL Corporation, tied to the Malaysia Digital 2030 plan and the target of becoming an AI nation by 2030.
Why it matters for Malaysia
The push to upskill people sits alongside a much larger bet the country is making on AI infrastructure. Malaysia is spending heavily to become a regional data-centre hub, and that build-out carries real trade-offs, including the way the same demand is quietly pushing up the price of a graphics card for local creators and gamers. Training more people to use AI, rather than only host the servers that run it, is the other half of that equation. Malaysians have been quick to adopt new AI tools and the questions that follow them, as our look at AI-generated music becoming traceable showed, and AIMTO_26 is a bet that broad, practical skills count as much as headline investment.
What else is on the floor
Beyond the Learn-A-Thon, the programme includes a podcast stage with live recordings featuring founders, policymakers and investors; a Pasar AI exhibition showcasing government and private-sector digital services; and developer and creator showcases demonstrating AI used in fintech, education, healthcare and business. The event is backed by a wide group of partners, with YTL AI Labs as AI platform partner and 500 Global as venture-capital partner, alongside MRANTI, KrackedDevs, Kadosh AI, Women in Tech, AISEA, Deriv, AMIKO and Tealive.
The takeaway
AIMTO_26 is aimed at the general public as much as the industry, so it is worth a look whether you want structured AI training, a read on where national policy is heading, or simply to see what a record-setting learning session looks like. Registration and the full programme are on the official event site at aimto.my.
Cover image by Product School on Unsplash.
