Google Malaysia Data Center Push Adds $15B for 2027 and 2028

Google will invest an additional $15 billion in Malaysia in 2027 and 2028, with the money going mainly into its Google Malaysia data center footprint in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat announced the plan on November 4 in Kuala Lumpur, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim at the event.

The package expands Google’s existing campus at Elmina Business Park in Selangor and adds new planned campuses in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. It builds on the $2 billion commitment from 2024 that brought Google’s first data center and a Google Cloud region to the country, according to CNA.

What the Google Malaysia Data Center Expansion Includes

Google says construction will add an average of $1.1 billion a year to Malaysia’s GDP and support more than 37,000 local jobs annually, with about $378 million in yearly labor income. Once the sites are running, the company expects more than 9,000 long-term jobs, paying around 45% above the national median wage.

Porat said the capacity will run local AI applications and power services such as Search, Maps and Chrome for users across Malaysia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. She also framed the move as a bet on the country’s next phase of digital growth, as reported by Malay Mail.

Power, Water and Skills Commitments

Energy is the sensitive part of any hyperscale build, and Google is trying to get ahead of it. The company says it will add more than 1 GW of clean energy to the grid with national utility TNB and will pay 100% of its own electricity and grid connection costs. Anwar said Google had accepted the government’s environmental conditions. The debate is familiar: AI’s energy use keeps growing as models scale.

Water is the other pressure point. Two days earlier, Google said it would fund a $160 million off-river reservoir and treatment plant in Negeri Sembilan that will supply 65 million liters of treated water a day and pass to state ownership, as detailed on the Google Malaysia blog. The company also plans skills programs to train about 800,000 Malaysians by 2031, including data center institutes at polytechnics from 2027.

Why It Matters

The Malaysia deal lands as data center growth meets resistance elsewhere. On the same day, voters in at least 14 towns backed an Ohio data center ban or new limits on such projects.

Southeast Asia, by contrast, is still competing for cloud capacity, and Malaysia has drawn heavy data center investment in recent years. Developers elsewhere are also pairing new sites with their own power, much like the Drax data center plan in the UK.