Remember back in December when Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, made a trip to Malaysia, where it was announced that he was partnering up with YTL to bring his company’s supercomputers into the country by the middle of this year? Well, our minister of Investment, Trade, & Industry, Tengku Zafrul, reaffirmed that the original plan is on track.
As per an official post on X, formerly Twitter, Zafrul confirmed that the the NVIDIA and YTL partnership will see a total investment of RM20 billion, with an initial RM4.3 billion set to be invested throughout the first phase of its plan, which is scheduled to take place in June 2024. Further, and as mentioned earlier, that investment will also see the two companies bringing in what the minister describes as the “fastest” supercomputer into the country.
Ingat tak semasa Misi Pelaburan dan Perdagangan ke San Francisco pada November lalu, saya telah melawat fasiliti NVIDIA?
Pada Disember lalu juga Jensen Huang, pengasas dan CEO NVIDIA telah ke Malaysia untuk bertemu YAB Perdana Menteri.
Hari ini, saya bermesyuarat bersama pihak… pic.twitter.com/poVGKfMYs2
— Tengku Zafrul 🇲🇾 (@tzafrul_aziz) February 29, 2024
If that statement is to be taken at face value, then our guess is that he is referring to the DGX GH200 AI Supercomputer that NVIDIA announced back in June last year, during Computex 2023. Regardless, it reportedly falls in place with Zafrul’s New Industrial Master Plan (NIMP), which is to transform the country into a “cloud-first nation” by 2030.
Additionally, and in light of the investment, Zafrul also said that the government is also working together with NVIDIA and YTL, looking into ways to strengthen both R&D and the overall AI ecosystem in Malaysia, primarily through the creation of a new Centre of Excellence (COE).
(Source: Twitter)
