Malaysian Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli said that Malaysia will pay Arm $250 million over 10 years to obtain the company’s chip design solutions for local manufacturers. Malaysia plans to produce its own graphics processing unit (GPU) chips within the next five to 10 years as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers continues to grow.
Rafizi Ramli said the government will pay Arm for its intellectual property rights, including seven high-end chip design blueprints.
Rafizi Ramli mentioned in the interview that Malaysia hopes that the deal with Arm will allow the domestic manufacturer to expand its scale and create 10 local chip companies, each with annual revenue of US$1.5 billion to US$2 billion.
Since 2023, many technology giants including Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet Google and ByteDance have announced billions of dollars of investment in digital technology in Malaysia, mainly for cloud services and data centers, and AI demand is driving an infrastructure boom.
In April 2024, Malaysia said it planned to build Southeast Asia's largest integrated circuit (IC) design park and would provide incentives such as tax breaks, subsidies and visa fee exemptions to attract global technology companies and investors.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that the park will house world-class anchor tenants and cooperate with global companies such as Arm. There is news that Arm will sign an agreement to set up a base in Malaysia this week.