KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 9): Malaysia aims to locally produce its own graphics processing unit (GPU) chips in the next five to 10 years, in line with the increasing demand from data centres, according to Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli.
“If we are able to realise the potential to downstream our semiconductors, instead of just doing back-end, we are hoping we can start producing made-by-Malaysia GPUs and chips in the next five to 10 years,” Rafizi said during a session at the Malaysia Economic Forum 2025 on Thursday.
“This is not only to create a new high-value economic sector that serves our own demand, but we can then become a global player,” he added.
Rafizi said this following a question from session moderator Maybank president and group chief executive officer Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli on what the minister would say to quarters pointing to the negative aspects of Malaysia’s data centre push.
“As with everything else in life, there’s good and bad — there’s opportunities and problems that come with it,” Rafizi said.
The minister recognised data centres’ downsides, namely their energy and water-guzzling nature, as well as the lack of economic trickling effect at this current stage.
“A lot of the trickle effect went to the property and construction sectors, but not really the nitty gritty of the server racks, we don’t have an original device manufacturer (ODM) in the country so a lot of these goods were imported,” he said.
Nonetheless, Rafizi observes that Malaysia is on track to become a major data centre hub, a trend that seems irreversible as data is expected to become a utility similar to electricity and water in the next 10-15 years.
“So there’s suddenly an opportunity that can accelerate us by leap-frogging the [semiconductor] value chain.
“To Malaysia, my view is this, we take this demand on our power system as a challenge. If anything, it means that we have to double down to strengthen and build more robustness for our power sector,” he added.