The Malaysian government has previously expressed its aim of making the country a regional cloud and digital hub by 2030. Part of this involves establishing a sovereign AI cloud locally. Today, at the tabling of the Budget 2026, Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced that this will be established by the MCMC, with an investment fo RM2 billion.
In the same vein, the MCMC will be establishing an AI Transformation Centre. This will be done with the help of Universiti Multimedia and the Centre of Excellence in Ethics for Emerging Technologies as a “culturally sensitive R&D and AI centre”.
Anwar also says that the National AI Office (NAIO) will be getting nearly RM20 million. This is to be used to developing skilled talent, strengthening digital infrastructure, and creating an efficient AI ecosystem.
Beyond upcoming efforts, Anwar also mentions Microsoft’s investment into the country with the establishment of the Malaysia West cloud region. Also mentioned was the launch of the Intelek Luhur Malaysia Untukmu (ILMU) LLM made by Universiti Malaya and YTL AI Labs. A chatbot has also been derived from it, called ILMUChat, which not only understand local context, but is also claimed to understand the local mix of languages.
(Source: RTM / YouTube)
