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Alibaba Cloud opens Johor cloud region
Chinese tech giant unveils two new datacentres in Johor, cementing its largest infrastructure presence in Southeast Asia while capitalising on spillover demand from Singapore
Alibaba Cloud has launched a new cloud region in Johor, Malaysia, with two new datacentres to address the growing demand for cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) services in the country.
Announced today, the expansion brings the cloud provider’s total number of facilities in Malaysia to five, marking its largest digital infrastructure presence in Southeast Asia to date.
The choice of Johor reflects Southeast Asia’s evolving datacentre scene. Over the past few years, Johor has emerged as one of the region’s fastest-growing datacentre market, driven largely by spillover demand from neighbouring Singapore.
Following a 2019 moratorium on new datacentre builds in Singapore due to land, water and energy constraints, global hyperscalers and datacentre providers began looking across the Causeway. While Singapore lifted the pause in 2022, it introduced strict new sustainability standards and capacity limits that have curtailed unbridled expansion.
Johor has seized on the opportunity to offer industrial land at a fraction of the cost, cheaper utility tariffs, and sub-five-millisecond latency to Singapore. Industry estimates show Johor now boasts a datacentre pipeline of around 5.7GW (gigawatts) of capacity, outstripping Singapore’s projected capacity of roughly 1.6GW. This cross-border synergy is further cemented by the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, which aims to promote investments and digital connectivity between the two hubs.
“This expansion in Malaysia is a direct response to surging customer demand as local businesses scale cloud-native operations and integrate AI at scale,” said Choong Hon Keat, general manager of Malaysia for Alibaba Cloud. “Our new datacentres in Johor will enable us to deliver more resilient, low-latency services, helping companies innovate faster.”
Agentic AI push
The new Johor facilities will offer a suite of cloud services, ranging from compute, storage, and networking to big data and cloud-native solutions.
Alibaba Cloud also plans to roll out a suite of agentic AI services in Malaysia during the second half of 2026. These offerings are expected to provide enterprises with full-lifecycle management for building and running AI agents at scale, including AgentRun, an agent development platform, and StarOps, an operations platform.
The Johor launch is part of Alibaba Cloud’s previously announced $53bn investment in AI and cloud infrastructure in 2025. With this addition, the provider’s global footprint now spans 104 availability zones across 32 regions.
Gobind Singh Deo, Malaysia’s minister of digital, welcomed the launch, noting that the facilities will propel the nation’s digital ambitions.
“The addition of Alibaba Cloud’s new datacentres 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,” he said.
Alibaba Cloud’s customers in Malaysia include TNG Digital, which is using the cloud supplier’s unified data platform to enhance search and recommendation capabilities for users of its TNG eWallet app.
YTL AI Labs, which previously worked with Alibaba to develop the ILMU family of indigenous large language models (LLMs), is also using Alibaba’s cloud infrastructure to build complex AI agents for critical environments.
In the creative sector, platforms such as Morphyx.io and TabSpace.ai are tapping Alibaba’s advanced video generation models, including Wan2.7 and HappyHorse via Model Studio, to streamline digital production pipelines and generate rights-cleared creative assets at scale.
Read more about cloud and AI in ASEAN
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- Agoda has set its sights on becoming an AI-powered travel companion as it changes how it builds software and moves its tech workforce into a new facility in Bangkok.
- Digital Realty expands Southeast Asian footprint beyond Singapore and Jakarta, acquiring a connectivity hub in Malaysia’s Cyberjaya with plans for a 14MW campus to support regional AI and cloud workloads.
