YTL Power is spearheading Malaysia’s AI ambitions with a major data centre development in Johor positioning the state as a new regional hub for digital infrastructure and next-gen innovation. The move strengthens Malaysia’s role in Southeast Asia’s AI ecosystem amid rising global demand for computing power.
00:00ytl power international berhad is taking the lead in malaysia's artificial intelligence
00:11ai revolution driving large-scale technological transformation through its states of the art
00:17ai data center campus in kulai johol a project that underscores malaysia's emergence as a
00:24regional ai hub the massive campus powered by nvidia's cutting edge edge liquid cool nvl72 grace
00:32blackwall gb200 gpus is expected to reach full capacity within two years the malaysian media had
00:40the opportunity to interview ytl power managing director datuk sriyo sok hong in gongju south korea
00:46yes as you know jensen visited malaysia 22 months ago to to find a destination to build ai in the
01:02region and he found that malaysia is the best place to put an ai hub because of our abundance of
01:10uh electricity water and land and the resources that we have so in the 22 months malaysia has
01:18been transformed if you see uh the progress in joho into already a major ai hub in the region
01:27so uh the prime minister was very pleased that uh in a short while of 22 months
01:33uh so so so so much progress have been uh done uh through ai in malaysia so moving forward the
01:43prime minister also wanted to have ideas from jensen to have a committee to to give him ideas
01:50on how to further accelerate this ai program in uh in malaysia so uh this is uh this is very exciting
02:01and i think uh the risk what we have now in malaysia is that we have all the compute power
02:08in terms of uh the uh nvidia chipsets that are already operational in our coolai data center
02:15we also have our large language model the llm called umu which means that malaysia has the ability
02:23to do uh their own sovereign ai meaning to say that the uh all these data will be done through our llm which
02:33is a malaysian owned ip owned by malaysians and all this will be uh subjected to the sovereignty of
02:42malaysia so for for countries who want to implement ai especially for countries we will be one of those
02:50that are in the forefront of ai in that we are able to uh develop our own ecosystem uh so that we don't
02:59have to uh to parallel the uh the likes of the world so for ytl the investment is of uh two nature
03:10one is the infrastructure aspect of the investment which is the data centers which we have invested
03:1710 billion the other is the the solution side which is the large language model and the uh and applications
03:25that comes with it so if you have noticed we just launched our right bank it is the first ai bank
03:33in the world and this is an example of how uh the ai is being uh powered by our malaysian llm
03:44using our malaysian uh infrastructure of our data and the compute power in malaysia so already uh with
03:54the launch of this uh ilmu there are already 200 companies in malaysia startup companies that are
04:02already talking to us how to connect to our apis and how to begin to develop that and we have a
04:08program also with the government to support them by giving them preferential uh tokens so that they
04:17are able to use these compute powers at the very reasonable prices to develop their solutions it is
04:24already operational customers are already being uh are beginning to use it already and uh we are now
04:32talking about further expansion the speed of further expansion will be also very reliant on the adaptation
04:40of uh malaysian governments uh you know on the ai uh utilization we were this this month we have taken
04:49over and it's already uh it's already been commissioned and it's ready for use yeah we we uh we already have a huge
04:59campus it is a green uh data center in that we have uh solar power that is uh empowering the electricity supply
05:09on top of that we have got uh 600 megawatts of uh the uh national utility which packs up the power
05:19requirements of these uh of these uh clusters so uh malaysia we will have uh we already have 300 megawatts
05:30being built and commissioned on the site so it's going at a very rapid pace and we reckon in the next
05:37two years this will be fully uh occupied that we are not announcing any numbers but uh as you know uh we
05:46are not just doing with nvidia there are other data centers a lot of uh uh hyperscalers international
05:55hyperscalers they are also on this campus i think uh we are in the forefront uh of uh in the region in
06:04that because we have our own uh malaysian own infrastructure we have our own large language models
06:11and uh which is the brain behind all the solutions so with this we can quickly uh trans translate this
06:20into applications like i said if you are using uh right bank today it is powered by malaysian
06:27uh infrastructure already so more and more solutions will be found uh and very quickly too
06:35and malaysia as you know is a very stable government and uh the uh once the uh major players all over the
06:45world have chosen malaysia and joho in particular to be the uh to be their their base it will only
06:53grow from here because you it is when you have an international operations like this and such huge
07:00investments you can't be shifting from one place to another this is how malaysia was once the biggest
07:07semiconductor player in the region and i think uh the ai uh data centers will also enjoy the the same
07:17uh catalyst the same form of investment it is the place of choice in uh southeast asia now for building
07:26data centers oh yeah i mean uh we we have implemented a lot of things and we are now uh you know on the
07:34solution side like i said you know the uh ilmo will be powering a lot of solutions all right from banking
07:42solutions uh for example a lot of uh private uh and confidential details are required in certain
07:50industries like banks and all that they will be the fastest to adopt this because uh
07:56of the sovereignty of data so all these things are coming up very quickly now and the implementation
08:02is getting very fast and the important thing is that we have proven that malaysia has the expertise
08:07and the capability of implementing this successfully so just in case uh we are doubting that uh we don't
08:16have the resources or the manpower or the capability to do this this project has shown that and uh and also
08:24also confirmed by by by jensen himself that malaysia is indeed leading in the region already okay i think it is
08:31for malaysia as far as the government is concerned the most important thing is how do you transform very quickly
08:38this ai technology to improve the service to the rakyat for example when you talk about healthcare today the technology for
08:47the technology for healthcare is such if you have already like malaysia has 5g connectivity ai what it means
08:54is that today you do not have to send your a patient to kuala lumpur to do a checkup all right simple checkups
09:06can be done through uh ai and all these valuations can be done if we are short of uh radiographers short of uh
09:14uh people to evaluate some of these things this can be done uh uh uh by uh uh expert of of pools of uh of doctors
09:23rather than individuals so resources can be put together communications can be done it is going to transform
09:31so why is it important to have a malaysian own uh large language model it means that it is localized
09:41it can speak our dialect it can speak our language so when today when we are seeing things we are still
09:48used to the fact that it is text that means we have a text as a reply in future the ai is only going to be
09:55spoken so you can imagine our machis or pachis in the kampong they may not type but they can speak and that ai is going to be able to
10:06is going to be able to interact with her and guide her without her having to transform technology learning
10:13how to uh how to uh to to type and how to do all this digital it's going to be very important so the beauty about
10:23ai is that it's not only text it's going to be uh voice it's going to be vision it's going to so services can be converted very easily
10:33you know and cost of of of doing it is going to be much easier and it's going to be 24 hour service
10:40and also it's not so much a human service that uh that that will be so much more difficult
10:47so it is it is like this that i think uh the especially the in the rural areas that this technology has to be given
10:57has to be brought right for example today if you look at our right bank you can open an account in two minutes
11:04you don't have to make an appointment to go to a bank branch if you are in a kampong isn't that great
11:11right you can you you can transfer money or your children can transfer money to you you can spend it in uh in your kampong and all that you can't you don't need necessary cash and you don't need to be transported to you to be
11:25somewhere if you're paying your bills everything is easier okay so technology is going to come and it's going to ease the life
11:32and that's what our prime minister and the government wants this to succeed because it knows that this is the way to improve services for the rakyat
11:46for the rakyat this is in kulai we still have 300 megawatts uh capacity to uh to be filled up and of course
11:53within the same area within the same same campus and of course we have new campuses in kl and other places as well
12:00so in three years it's not just kulai it's also they are all over we are growing very fast we are in slango we are in every place now
12:07but i think the important thing is the full integration on infrastructure and solutions
12:14it's it's no point when you have infrastructure when you have no solutions all right because you still cannot get out the product
12:20you're still waiting for someone to give you a solution but now our young people can now use this compute power and divide their own solutions
12:26so you'll be surprised i i personally when you look at the bank and this uh right bank is 100% designed by our malaysian uh uh uh uh capabilities
12:45you know our malaysian engineers and so it proves a point that we have those capabilities and now uh we get a lot of call
12:55a lot of calls a lot of contacts from all over the world that wants to come back because they see
13:01that malaysia is advancing on ai and they can come back and participate in this and do something for
13:07malaysia you know before they are educated they have done it but no job in malaysia you know there is no
13:14but this with this it opens up for them to come back and uh and also help malaysia quicken this process
13:22process and acceleration of ai yeah implementation yeah
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