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AI Parks in Malaysia

4 min readUpdated November 2026
AI Parks in Malaysia
Type
Innovation and infrastructure zones
Lead agencies
MDEC, MRANTI, MOSTI, Ministry of Digital
Key sites
Technology Park Malaysia (Bukit Jalil), proposed national AI park
First proposal
2019
Roadmap
AI-RMAP 2021-2025 (National AI Park initiative)
Related
MRANTI, AI Data Centres Malaysia, Malaysia AI Startups
AI parks in Malaysia are designated sites and facilities — research parks, commercialisation campuses and infrastructure zones — created or proposed to concentrate the country's artificial intelligence development, ranging from MRANTI's operating AI Park at Bukit Jalil to national park proposals in Malaysia's AI roadmap[1][2].

Background

The first major national proposal came in April 2019, during Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's visit to Beijing for the second Belt and Road Forum: Malaysia's G3 Global, China Harbour Engineering Company and Chinese AI firm SenseTime announced a US$1 billion AI park focused on computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing, intended as research infrastructure, a talent training ground and a commercial AI ecosystem. The location had not been fixed at the time of the announcement[1].

The National Artificial Intelligence Roadmap 2021–2025 (AI-RMAP), prepared under MOSTI, carried the idea into national policy, with strategic initiatives covering the "formation of a National AI Park" and a proposal to transform Technology Park Malaysia into a national AI park[2].

Parks and initiatives

MRANTI AI Park. MRANTI (Malaysia Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation) launched its AI Park at Technology Park Malaysia in Bukit Jalil, backed by more than US$7 million allocated in Budget 2022. The park provides facilities for testing and developing AI-enabled technology, with named strands in agriculture (sustainable urban farming, smart farm systems) and health technology, plus a MakersLab learning centre for students and developers[3].

Immerso AI Park. Announced in August 2024 by the Ministry of Digital, Eros Investments Group and Immerso AI-IP set out plans for a US$1 billion AI park and Malaysia's first AI movie studio, with the park encompassing an AI university and an AI data centre, and the potential creation of 5,000 jobs over five years[4].

Data-centre clusters. Physical AI infrastructure has also concentrated through hyperscaler investment: Google broke ground in October 2024 on its US$2 billion first Malaysian data centre and cloud region at Elmina Business Park, followed by a US$15 billion commitment for 2027–2028, alongside concentrated data-centre development in Johor[5].

Why parks matter

  • Shared infrastructure — land, power, cooling, connectivity and shared compute that individual startups cannot fund alone.
  • Incentives — Malaysia Digital status tax and duty exemptions administered by MDEC.
  • Talent clustering — co-location with universities, MRANTI incubation and industry partners.
  • Testbeds — space to trial regulated applications in mobility, healthcare and agriculture close to regulators.
>See Also

🇲🇾Malaysian Context

🇲🇾 AI parks are the physical expression of Malaysia's stated ambition to become an "AI Nation" by 2030: they convert roadmap targets into sites where the National AI Office's priorities, MDEC's incentives and MRANTI's commercialisation pipeline meet in one location. The parks also link the AI agenda to the National Semiconductor Strategy and the Penang semiconductor ecosystem, since AI infrastructure depends on chips, packaging and advanced cooling skills Malaysia already possesses.

For graduates and career-switchers, parks concentrate entry-level AI jobs outside the software industry's usual remote roles. Governance follows the sites: testbeds and parks process citizen and customer data, so PDPA 2010 and Malaysia's AI governance framework apply to experiments as they would to any production system, and data centre growth inside these zones keeps power, water and sustainability questions (see AI and Energy) on the national agenda.

References

  1. ↑Computer Weekly. (2019). Malaysia to get its first AI park. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252462380/Malaysia-to-get-its-first-AI-park
  2. ↑MOSTI. Malaysia National Artificial Intelligence Roadmap 2021-2025 (AI-RMAP). https://www.mosti.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/AIR-Map-Playbook-Overall-19102021-RTG.pdf
  3. ↑GovInsider / MRANTI. (2022). How Malaysia's AI park is driving innovations in agriculture and health. https://mranti.my/happenings/news/how-malaysias-ai-park-is-driving-innovations-in-agriculture-and-health
  4. ↑Ministry of Digital Malaysia. (2024). Ministry of Digital Welcomes Eros Investments, Immerso AI-IP and Partners USD1 Billion Investment to Develop the First AI Movie Studio. https://www.digital.gov.my/en-GB/siaran/usd1billion-investments-to-develop-the-first-ai-movie-studio
  5. ↑Google. (2024). Google Breaks Ground on US$2 Billion Malaysia Data Center and Cloud Region. https://www.googlecloudpresscorner.com/2024-10-1-Google-Breaks-Ground-on-US-2-Billion-Malaysia-Data-Center-and-Cloud-Region,-Announces-Support-for-New-Sustainability-and-Skilling-Initiatives
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