Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told an audience in Melaka that Masayoshi Son, the head of Japan's SoftBank, had discussed putting about US$50 billion (roughly RM204 billion) into Malaysia. Anwar said the money would go to artificial intelligence, new technology and data centres, with Son naming Sarawak and the peninsula.
Quick facts
- Figure: about US$50 billion, or roughly RM204 billion at Bank Negara Malaysia's 28 October 2026 reference rate of RM4.0818 to the US dollar
- For: AI, new technology and data centres
- Where: Sarawak (Kuching) and Peninsular Malaysia
- Source: PM Anwar, in a speech in Melaka on 24 October 2026
- Status: SoftBank has not confirmed the US$50 billion figure, any committed investment or a timeline
What Anwar actually said
Anwar said Son conveyed the plan in a recent videoconference, and had named Kuching in Sarawak along with locations on the peninsula, The Edge Malaysia reported. TechNode Global carried the same account.
The caveat matters. The figure is the Prime Minister's account of a private call, not a signed deal, and SoftBank has not confirmed the US$50 billion figure, any committed investment or a timeline.
Why the grid matters more than the number
A data centre is, before anything else, a very large electricity customer, and that is where a US$50 billion AI build meets a real Malaysian limit. In its August 2025 update, Tenaga Nasional reported about 6.7 gigawatts across 47 data-centre projects.
That is the backdrop any fresh data-centre plan lands on. As our own reporting on national consumption has shown, power demand is already climbing across the grid, well before a new AI build adds to it.
Part of a bigger push
The SoftBank figure sits on top of a run of AI-nation moves. Malaysia unveiled a set of locally designed chips this month, the government is planning a sovereign AI cloud, and Budget 2027 leaned on AI skills and subsidies. Attracting the kind of AI and data-centre spending Son described reads, to us, as the infrastructure end of the same ambition.
For now the US$50 billion is a figure in a speech. What Malaysia builds next, the power stations, water and grid connections on the peninsula, and the separate Sarawak grid, run by Sarawak Energy, that would host any Kuching project, is what will show whether it turns into megawatts on the ground.
