Microsoft to open Southeast Asia 3 cloud region in Johor Bahru, per $2.2B Malaysia plan
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Microsoft’s Southeast Asia 3, its second cloud region in Malaysia, will be built in Johor Bahru.
In a statement on Wednesday, Microsoft said the region is part of its $2.2 billion four-year investment plan for Malaysia and will help accelerate AI adoption across Southeast Asia. Microsoft did not provide other details.
Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s Commercial Organization, said Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most dynamic regions. The expanded investment reflects Microsoft’s commitment to helping governments and businesses use AI.
Malaysia’s Minister of Digital, Gobind Singh Deo, said the milestone underlines the country’s progress in the digital economy and its position as a secure and reliable location for organizations’ digital assets.
Southeast Asia 3 will join Microsoft Azure’s more than 70 global regions. It follows Malaysia West, which Microsoft opened in May 2025 with three data centres in Greater Kuala Lumpur. Laurence Si, managing director of Microsoft Malaysia, said the region will be connected to Microsoft’s global Azure backbone of subsea and terrestrial fibre, and will support advanced workloads and AI services for public- and private-sector customers.
Microsoft highlighted the Johor Bahru region will include several sustainability measures. Its backup generators will run on renewable biofuel to reduce net carbon emissions.
Under its community program, Microsoft will run the Skills2Work Datacenter Foundations Program with The Asia Foundation and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to train 150 recent graduates over 12 months for datacenter careers. It is also training 200 trainers from 20 social enterprises through UNDP Malaysia and BPEN Johor, aiming to reach about 10,000 community members.
Microsoft emphasized Malaysian companies using AI on its platform. AFFIN Group said it became the first bank in Asia Pacific to run a digital core banking platform on Microsoft Azure. RHB Bank uses Azure OpenAI within Microsoft Teams for bilingual staff information retrieval. PETRONAS said it is building AI into its operations and decision-making.
Microsoft said that by October 2025, more than 734,000 people had been trained under AIForMYFuture, its national skills program, against a target of 800,000 by the end of 2025. Laurence Si said Microsoft has been a trusted technology partner to Malaysia for more than 33 years.
Cloud growth becomes key measure of AI returns for US tech giants – BMI