PETALING JAYA: Alibaba Cloud, a global provider of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and the intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has launched a public cloud region in Johor, with two new data centres established to meet the country’s growing demand for cloud and AI services.
As part of Alibaba’s previously announced US$53 billion (RM215 billion) investment in AI and cloud infrastructure in 2025, this expansion brings Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure to 104 availability zones across 32 regions, providing a secure, scalable, robust, cloud and AI infrastructure to support customers worldwide in their digital innovation journeys.
The new facilities in Johor offer a comprehensive suite of cloud computing products – from compute, storage, container, networking, big data, security and databases to cloud-native services.
To meet the growing demand for enterprise agents in the region, Alibaba Cloud also plans to introduce a suite of agentic AI services to Malaysia in the second half of this year. These products include AgentRun, a one-stop intelligent agent development and build platform, STAROps, a comprehensive intelligent operations platform; ACS Agent Sandbox, which provides hardware-level security isolation while reducing operational costs of AI agents, Agent Security Centre, an integrated defence platform for AI agents; AI Security Guardrails 2.0, an upgraded security solution with end-to-end risk detection capabilities as well as Agentic SOC, an enterprise-grade, AI agent-driven security operations platform.
The new products are designed to streamline the building and running of enterprise-scale agents in a secure environment, providing enterprises with full cycle management of agent engineering.
Since 2017, Alibaba Cloud has been among the earliest global cloud providers to invest in Malaysia, including establishing its first twin data centre presence and adding the third facility last year in the country. The launch of Johor region brings Alibaba Cloud’s total data centre footprint in Malaysia to five facilities, which marks its largest infrastructure presence in Southeast Asia so far.
“The addition of Alibaba Cloud’s new data centres in Johor further strengthens Malaysia’s position as a key destination for AI-ready infrastructure and high-value digital investments. This expansion aligns with Malaysia’s cloud-first and AI-driven national agenda, propelling us closer to realising our vision of becoming an AI Nation by 2030 through secure, scalable, and future-ready digital infrastructure that enables both industry innovation and public sector transformation,” said Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo.
“Malaysia remains a strategic key market for us in Southeast Asia, and we are deeply committed to empowering enterprises of all sizes on their cloud and AI journey with our robust and secure cloud and AI technologies,” said Alibaba Cloud Intelligence general manager of Malaysia Choong Hon Keat.
“This expansion in Malaysia is a direct response to surging customer demand as local businesses scale cloud-native operations and integrate AI at scale. Our new data centres in Johor will enable us to deliver more resilient, low-latency services, helping companies innovate faster, scale securely, and operate with greater efficiency in the AI era,” he added.
TNG Digital Sdn Bhd chief technology officer Leslie Lip said, “Through our partnership with Alibaba Cloud, we are strengthening the technology foundation that enables us to deliver more intuitive and localised experiences for our users. By bringing together data and search capabilities within a unified platform, we can accelerate innovation more efficiently while simplifying operational complexity as we continue to scale our digital ecosystem.”
