Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd plans to pour more capital into strengthening its power infrastructure and funding local semiconductor firms amid a data center boom in Malaysia, its managing director told Reuters yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. Amirul Feisal Wan Zahir, Khazanah’s MD reportedly said while global investors have been pouring money into data centres, Khazanah would instead focus on infrastructure.
Saying that the data center and AI boom requires a lot of computing power which means energy, the Khazanah chief added: “We’re really looking at the energy part, so again looking at grid resilience. Cheap and reliable power, including renewables, would be critical as AI infrastructure scales up.”
Amirul Feisal was of the view that energy supply and grid resilience are central to competitiveness in the AI boom. “And that’s when we think about capturing some of that growth,” he told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.
Khazanah would also explore how it could help fund some of Malaysia’s semiconductor players to move up the value chain to advanced packaging,” the energy chief said.
Malaysia is determined to strengthen its semiconductor industry and plans to allocate at least US$ 5.3 billion in fiscal incentives in its bid to attract US$ 123. 4 billion of investment as stated by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in May 2024. It plans to build up local capabilities in chip design and advanced packaging.