By Kimberley Kao


Microsoft will invest $2.2 billion in cloud and artificial-intelligence infrastructure in Malaysia, coming on the heels of fresh spending plans in Indonesia and Thailand as the U.S. tech giant gears up for rising AI computing demand in Southeast Asia.

Microsoft said Thursday that its investment over four years will build on previously announced plans to construct its first data center region in Malaysia, and mark its single biggest investment in the country.

Microsoft made the announcement as part of Chief Executive Satya Nadella's visit to the country, where he met with the Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Thursday.

It said the outlay would help meet growing demand for cloud computing services in Malaysia, provide training in AI skills to 200,000 people, and allow it to work with the government to develop local cyber security capabilities.

Nadella is on his final leg of a trip to Southeast Asia, where he has unveiled plans to spend billions of dollars to boost the company's footprint in the region, including by building data centers to help power its cloud computing business. The company said it would build its first data center in Thailand, and invest $1.7 billion into cloud computing and other pursuits in Indonesia, where it is currently building a data center.

Microsoft competes in cloud services with Alphabet, Amazon and Alibaba in Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region of more than 670 million people where demand for data centers is rising.

The company's cloud computing business, Azure, has been expanding rapidly amid rising demand for AI computing. The company said last week that its Azure cloud business in the first quarter grew 31% compared with the same period a year earlier, with 7 percentage points of the growth coming from its AI services, helping to fuel the company's 17% topline growth.

Spending on data centers and other infrastructure to host rising demand took the company's capital expenditures to $14 billion in the first quarter, up from $11.5 billion in the preceding quarter.


Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-01-24 2354ET