SoftBank's Telecom Arm Joins a Four-Country ASEAN AI Data-Centre Alliance, Grab's Lending Book Doubles, and Every Malaysian IT Buyer Says They Will Spend More on AI

SoftBank's Telecom Arm, Singapore's SC ZEUS and Malaysia's Robust HPC Sign a Four-Country AI Data-Centre Pact

SB Telecom Singapore, a SoftBank subsidiary, together with SC ZEUS Data Centers of Singapore and Malaysia's Robust HPC Group, signed an agreement effective 1 August 2026 to jointly develop AI data centres across Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. The division of labour is explicit: SC ZEUS handles land sourcing, design, build and operation; Robust HPC handles GPU cluster procurement, setup and management; and SB Telecom Singapore handles data hall fit-out, ICT integration, deployment support and connectivity. The specified infrastructure includes liquid cooling, 800 VDC architecture and low-latency networking.

The commercial model is aimed at AI Factory solutions, GPU-as-a-Service platforms and what the partners describe as "AI Token Factory" models. Hisao Inoue, Managing Director of SB Telecom Singapore, said the alliance "combines ICT connectivity, SC ZEUS's infrastructure capabilities, and Robust HPC's supercomputing expertise."

Grab's Financial Services Arm Grows Revenue 59% as Its Loan Book Triples Year-on-Year

Grab Financial Services reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of US$134 million, up 59% year-on-year. Loans disbursed reached US$1.2 billion, a 72% increase, and the gross loan portfolio expanded to US$2.3 billion from US$781 million. The segment's adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million from US$26 million. Deposits stood at US$2.5 billion across GXS Bank, GXBank and Superbank.

At group level, Grab reported revenue of US$997 million, up 22%, and profit of US$235 million, a figure that includes a US$307 million gain from consolidating Superbank. The company raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to US$4.10-4.15 billion.

Malaysia Is the Only Asian Market Where Every Surveyed IT Decision-Maker Plans to Increase AI Spending

An Alibaba Cloud-commissioned NielsenIQ survey of 1,000 IT decision-makers across eight Asian markets found that 100% of Malaysian respondents plan to increase AI investment, with 97% raising spending on AI infrastructure and more than 90% investing further in platform and model services. Malaysia was the only market in the study to register unanimous intent.

Across the region, 99% of respondents said AI is a priority, 75% called it indispensable to operations and 90% have begun adopting AI development tools. The leading barriers were data privacy and security, cited by 48%, and high implementation costs, cited by 42%. Strategic objectives were led by innovation and new business at 64%, cost savings at 63% and revenue growth at 48%. Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group CTO Dr Feifei Li said "The focus is shifting from producing efficient tokens to enabling actionable outcomes."

Eyes on the Day Ahead

The immediate watch items are siting and financing detail on the SoftBank-SC ZEUS-Robust HPC alliance: the agreement names four countries but no specific sites, power contracts or committed capacity, and those are the disclosures that would turn a memorandum into a project pipeline. On digital banking, Grab's Superbank consolidation gain means the next quarterly disclosure is the first clean read on the combined book, and any interim credit-quality commentary would be material. Over the next three to five days, watch for whether Malaysia's regulators or utilities respond to the domestic AI-demand data with anything concrete on power allocation — the constraint that has repeatedly bound the country's data-centre ambitions is grid capacity, not intent.