عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Technology

Oracle to Invest $6.5 Bn in Malaysian Cloud Services Region

(FILES) US multinational computer technology company Oracle's logo is pictured at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2024. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)
(FILES) US multinational computer technology company Oracle's logo is pictured at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2024. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)
TT
TT

Oracle to Invest $6.5 Bn in Malaysian Cloud Services Region

(FILES) US multinational computer technology company Oracle's logo is pictured at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2024. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)
(FILES) US multinational computer technology company Oracle's logo is pictured at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2024. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Tech giant Oracle on Wednesday said it plans to invest more than $6.5 billion on cloud services data centers in Malaysia, joining a list of US titans rushing to build up their AI infrastructure in Southeast Asia.

The firm said the cloud region would help organizations in the country modernize their applications, migrate their workload to the cloud and innovate with data, analytics and artificial intelligence.

Oracle is working to expand its cloud infrastructure business globally. The company recently projected it will surpass $100 billion in revenue in fiscal 2029, driven by increasing demand for cloud services.

Malaysia's new cloud region will be the firm's third in Southeast Asia, following two facilities in neighboring Singapore.

"Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organizations looking to accelerate their expansion with the latest digital technologies," Garrett Ilg, Oracle's executive vice president for Japan and Asia Pacific, said in a statement.

"Our multi-billion-dollar investment affirms our commitment to Malaysia as a regional gateway for cloud infrastructure as well as a comprehensive suite of software as a service applications deployed within Malaysia."

The statement also quoted Malaysia's Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz as welcoming the investment, saying it would help firms with innovative and cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies to boost their global competitiveness.

"Oracle's decision to establish a public cloud region in Malaysia underscores Malaysia's infrastructure readiness, and its growing position as a premier Southeast Asian destination for digital investments," he added.

Oracle is the latest global tech giant to announce major digital investments in Southeast Asia. Google-parent Alphabet said in May it would invest $2 billion to house the firm's first data center in Malaysia.

Google on Monday said it plans to invest $1 billion to build digital infrastructure in Thailand, including a new data center.

Amazon and Microsoft have also announced investments worth billions of dollars in the region as demand for AI hots up.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Tuesday announced that the country plans to develop a National Cloud Policy.

Most Viewed

 
 
Technology

Pope Says Concerns About AI ‘Should Be Taken Seriously’

Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)
Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Pope Says Concerns About AI ‘Should Be Taken Seriously’

Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)
Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)

Pope Leo XIV on Monday warned concerns about artificial intelligence "should be taken seriously" but added he was not in "panic mode".

"If someone were to ask me, am I in panic mode? No, I'm not. I sleep at night," he told reporters at a press conference on the plane returning from his visit to France, referring to concerns about AI.

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics was returning to the Vatican after a four-day trip where he has been greeted by crowds.

The visit comes seven months before French voters choose a successor to President Emmanuel Macron, with the Eurosceptic, anti-immigration far-right seeking power.

During his visit, the US pontiff repeatedly warned about the need to safeguard humanity against AI.

"If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment," he said.

The debate over the risks of the technology has intensified in recent months, fueled by several incidents and apocalyptic warnings from industry professionals.

On the plane on Monday, the pope said the warnings were not "fake news, as some have said, to try and cause whether financial or some other kind of benefit".

"This is a problem that I think we need to sit down and talk about," he said, adding: "To simply say 'Oh, it's not going to happen' and close our eyes to it, I think is probably not the most responsible way to go about that".

The Vatican has in recent months stepped up its rhetoric and initiatives in support of international AI governance, particularly in the fields of nuclear technology, culture and artistic creation.

Technology

Trump Confirms Meeting with Anthropic’s Amodei, Repeats Dismissal of AI Fears

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appears by video during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2026. (AFP)
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appears by video during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Trump Confirms Meeting with Anthropic’s Amodei, Repeats Dismissal of AI Fears

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appears by video during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2026. (AFP)
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appears by video during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2026. (AFP)

US President Donald Trump confirmed that he plans to have a dinner meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Sunday night, but reaffirmed his stance against slowing the pace of AI development.

Trump also reiterated his belief that new regulations would open the door for China to outpace the United States in AI advancement. Although he acknowledged Amodei's concern that going too fast on artificial intelligence could expand risks, Trump said it's more important for the United States to maintain a technological edge over China.

"We're about maybe a year and a half up on China," Trump told Fox ‌News while attending ‌the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Illinois. "We're leading, and we're building ‌tremendous, trillions ⁠of dollars' worth ⁠of places. And why should we give that up?"

Trump, confirming earlier reporting by Axios and Reuters, told Fox News that he would have dinner with Amodei on Sunday night. The meeting comes as the CEOs of Anthropic rivals have called for slowing development of increasingly capable AI systems. These include OpenAI, Google’s DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI.

A groundswell has risen in favor of federal intervention after OpenAI said in July that an autonomous AI agent went rogue during a security test and hacked ⁠into another company.

Incidents of rogue AI agents are not a cause ‌for alarm, Trump told Fox News. "I don't worry about ‌it," he said, adding that he remains confident in the technology and its potential.

Amodei is not the ‌only major tech figure trying to bend Trump's ear on AI regulation. In an ‌interview that aired earlier on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he would like to meet with Trump to discuss AI.

"I hope that, given my life's work in the field, my saying how unique and different this is and how concerned I am will add to what he's ‌hearing from other people," Gates said, echoing calls by Amodei and others for new AI regulations.

"You need law enforcement and the politicians ⁠to get into the ⁠discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like," Gates said in a taped interview. "And that has to be a required thing."

Trump has previously described the chorus of AI concerns as a "hoax." Gates argued that safeguards would not dramatically hinder the industry, and that the risks of not implementing them are real.

"It's not a hoax at all," Gates told NBC.

Warnings about AI's risks are not new. But they took on added urgency this month after researchers in leading AI labs attached both a timeline and a probability to those concerns.

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that AI could kill us all by the end of the decade, prompting US lawmakers to call for new rules to govern the technology.

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's alignment science lead, echoed Coxon's warning, saying there was a more than 10% chance of such an event within the next decade.

Technology

OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs Called to Appear at Australian AI Probe

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
TT
TT

OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs Called to Appear at Australian AI Probe

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

The CEOs of ‌OpenAI and Anthropic have been called to appear at an Australian Senate inquiry on AI, the head of the probe said on Sunday, days after the revelation that a rogue OpenAI bot had hacked the country's health-system database.

The Medicare breach, condemned by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, is one of the highest-profile incidents of AI agents accessing external systems outside the US, said Reuters.

OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have been sent written requests ‌to appear at ‌the inquiry, which is to ‌hold public ⁠hearings in the capital ⁠Canberra on Thursday, said a spokesperson for Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Australian Greens party, who chairs the probe.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours.

The OpenAI agent's incursion on one of the country's most used government agencies ⁠may prompt Albanese's Labor government to toughen ‌AI-specific laws it is ‌readying for next year, adding pressure to Australia-US relations already tested ‌by Canberra's ban on social media for teens, ‌tech policy experts say.

The Senate inquiry is examining the potential impacts of AI and data centers on Australian communities, industries, water and energy. It is one of several state ‌and federal probes into AI.

"There are serious questions for Sam Altman to answer about the ⁠OpenAI hack ⁠of Australian government websites," Hanson-Young said in a statement. Altman and Amodei "must front up, face the Senate's questions and have an honest conversation about what effective, lasting regulation of this industry should look like", she said.

Albanese, who revealed the June breach of Medicare on Thursday, called it "unacceptable", saying he had voiced "extreme concern" to Altman.

OpenAI says it only learned of the breach — one of at least four of Australian government websites — in August. It says the incident was not intentional and did not compromise any private information.