Malaysia Weighs Huawei's Ascend 910C Chips for a RM2 Billion Sovereign AI Cloud
Malaysia is evaluating Huawei's Ascend 910C chips for the backbone of a RM2 billion (roughly $490 million) sovereign AI cloud, according to Bloomberg reporting carried by The Edge Malaysia and SoyaCincau. State-linked Telekom Malaysia was selected through a public tender to operate the infrastructure, which is intended to keep sensitive government, military and intelligence data within Malaysia's borders. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has framed the effort as building local technological capability rather than remaining a consumer of foreign technology.
The Trump administration has warned that using the Ascend 910C could run afoul of US export rules and has raised national-security concerns about an "untrusted supplier" handling sensitive intelligence data. The episode echoes May 2025, when Malaysia briefly announced a similar plan involving roughly 3,000 Huawei Ascend chips before retracting it under US pressure; this time, officials are framing the decision as a commercial matter and asserting Malaysia's "sovereign right" to set its own policy. Malaysian National Security Council officials are scheduled to visit Washington this month, and the government may open a second tender allowing US chipmakers such as Nvidia and AMD to compete directly.
OpenAI Anchors Two New Firmus AI Factories in Malaysia Running Nvidia's Next-Generation Vera Rubin Chips
OpenAI signed a multi-year agreement on September 8 to become an anchor customer for two Firmus AI Factory sites in Malaysia, according to TechRepublic and Unite.AI. The Nvidia-backed Australian AI-infrastructure developer will deploy Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale systems at the sites, integrated with Firmus's proprietary HyperCube liquid-cooling design. Neither the megawatt allocation, contract value, exact site locations, nor service dates were disclosed; the deal pushes Firmus's total contracted capacity across all customers above 900 megawatts.
The Malaysian sites extend Firmus beyond its existing Australia and Singapore facilities toward seven planned AI factories across four countries, including a 360-megawatt Indonesia site targeting 2027. Malaysia drew approximately $23.6 billion in approved data-centre and cloud investment in the first half of 2026 alone.
MAS's Chia Der Jiun Lays Out a Three-Speed Timeline for AI, Tokenization and Quantum
Speaking at Global FinTech Fest 2026 in Mumbai on September 11, MAS managing director Chia Der Jiun said AI is advancing and being adopted faster than other emerging technologies, with models already performing at "expert or specialist levels" in coding, graduate-level science and mathematics, and general knowledge work, according to TechNode Global and Crowdfund Insider. He put tokenization several years away from scaling and quantum computing five to ten years out, though he said institutions should begin preparing for quantum resilience now.
Chia pointed to Pathfin.ai, a MAS platform for sharing and matching validated AI solutions across the industry, which has passed 300 participants, and described a cross-bank AI pilot with law enforcement that uses shared bank data to detect suspicious accounts and transactions in near-real time, with findings expected by year-end. The remarks build on a 2023 generative-AI risk framework and two 2025 AI risk-management handbooks covering banking, insurance and capital markets. He also cited CrowdStrike data showing high-severity vulnerabilities up sixfold and AI-enabled cyberattacks up 89%, though successful breaches have not risen proportionally.
Eyes on the Day Ahead
Watch for Malaysia's National Security Council delegation to Washington this month, and for any signal on whether Telekom Malaysia's tender stays Huawei-only or opens to Nvidia and AMD. In Singapore, track MAS's cross-bank AI fraud-detection pilot toward its year-end findings, and watch for AI-governance themes carrying into FinTech Week Singapore's Awards & Expo on September 16-17.
Layer 7 Ventures is a research-driven firm focused on AI and cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia. Views expressed are those of the firm and do not constitute investment advice.
