Photo: Fabio Achilli / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
KUCHING, Malaysia – SoftBank Group, Grab and Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (PETROS) said Monday they signed a joint development agreement for plans to invest US$1 billion in initial seed capital to build AI infrastructure in Sarawak, the Malaysian state on Borneo. The project carries a long-term target of five gigawatts of AI computing capacity, which is a goal, not capacity that exists today.
The photograph shows the Kuching waterfront in Sarawak in August 2018. It is an archival photo of the location, not an image of the project.
The three companies announced the agreement in a joint news release dated November 9. The release did not give a time of day. It says the agreement builds on a framework agreement the parties signed in Kuching on October 8, 2026, and moves the partnership into a joint development phase.
The proposed US$1 billion, about 4.07 billion Malaysian ringgit, would come to US$800 million from SoftBank Group, US$100 million from Grab and US$100 million from PETROS. The companies describe those amounts as proposed. They said the money would be deployed in stages, subject to the project reaching key development and customer contract milestones and to the necessary closing conditions.
SoftBank Group would lead the project and hold the majority stake, with Grab and PETROS as strategic partners. PETROS, a Sarawak energy company, would contribute its experience in energy and infrastructure through the Sarawak Gas Roadmap and its role as master developer of the Kuching Low-Carbon Hub. The companies said the investment is part of a multi-year plan, and that they will look for additional investors and hyperscaler customers to support its development and later expansion.
The release says the work will also explore other parts of the AI value chain, including AI computing and services, advanced technologies, robotics, and local workforce and community development. The companies said the project will be developed in close collaboration with Malaysia’s federal government and the Sarawak government, in line with the country’s AI Nation 2030 plan and the National AI Action Plan 2026-2030.
“Together with Grab and PETROS, we aim to create lasting opportunities in Sarawak,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group. PETROS chief executive Dato Janin Girie said the aim is to prepare Sarawak for its next economic phase beyond oil and gas. Grab chairman and chief executive Anthony Tan said Grab would bring its experience in AI tools and help create high-value jobs for Sarawakians.
The companies said that once fully operational, the facilities are expected to be among the largest AI infrastructure projects of their kind in Asia. That is the companies’ own projection, and the release gave no timeline for reaching it.
The announcement matters because it turns a framework into a signed agreement with named amounts and a lead investor, while still leaving most of the project’s scale conditional. What the release does not say: when construction would start, where the facilities would be built, how much power they would use, which customers have signed, how much of the five-gigawatt target is covered by the initial US$1 billion, or whether government approvals are still pending.
JBizNews Desk | Kuching, Malaysia
© JBizNews.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is strictly prohibited.
