Google to Invest $15 Billion in Malaysia Data Centres Over 2027 and 2028

According to Reuters, the spending covers data centre campuses, clean energy, water security and worker training. Google plans new campuses in the states of Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Its first Malaysian campus, at Elmina Business Park in Selangor, is already running. Bloomberg reported that the expansion takes in both data centre and cloud operations.

The commitment builds on the $2 billion investment Google announced for Malaysia in 2024.

Jobs, Power and Water

Google expects building the campuses to add an average of $1.1 billion a year to Malaysia's GDP and to support more than 37,000 local jobs a year, Reuters reported. Once the sites are running, Google projects more than 9,000 local jobs a year, with wages averaging 45 per cent above the national median.

On energy, the company said it will add more than 1 gigawatt of clean energy capacity to Malaysia's national grid. It also said it will pay for all of the electricity its campuses use, as well as the direct infrastructure costs of connecting them to the grid. Google expects the Malaysian sites to run at a power usage effectiveness of 1.12 to 1.14, a measure of how much of a facility's power reaches its computing equipment. It also said the campuses will help improve local water security.

Google plans four new programmes intended to train 800,000 Malaysians over five years. Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, said the investment supports Malaysia's development priorities by providing computing capacity, according to Reuters.

A Regional Data Centre Hub Under Strain

Malaysia is the fastest-growing location for new data centres in Southeast Asia. Figures from DC Byte, cited by AFP, show it accounts for more than half of the data centre capacity under construction in the region. The International Monetary Fund expects the Malaysian economy to grow 5.2 per cent in 2026, partly because of data centre activity, AFP reported.

The boom has also raised concerns about resources. In July, Malaysia's deputy prime minister told parliament that data centres could use a third of the country's total energy by 2035. The government said it would approve new projects only after making sure there was enough energy and water to supply them, according to AFP. Google's pledges to fund its own power, add clean capacity and support water security appear aimed at those concerns.

Why It Matters

Google's plan is another large bet by a US hyperscaler outside the United States as the major cloud providers raise AI infrastructure budgets. It also shows that governments with fast-growing data centre markets are making access to power and water a condition of approval. Gulf states are competing for hyperscale and AI computing investment of their own, so the commitments Google made on grid costs, clean energy and local skills are a useful benchmark for what host countries now ask of large data centre investors.