Google plans $15 billion Malaysia data-center expansion

Google said it will invest $15 billion in Malaysia during 2027 and 2028. The two-year plan would expand its data-center footprint with new campuses in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, building on the company’s Elmina Business Park presence in Selangor, while funding clean-energy, water-security and workforce programs.

By Google’s estimates, construction would contribute an annual average of $1.1 billion to Malaysia’s gross domestic product and support more than 37,000 local jobs a year during the construction phase. The company also projected that the operating facilities would sustain more than 9,000 local jobs annually, with wages averaging 45% above the national median. Those figures are company forecasts; the opened sources did not include Google’s underlying methodology or assumptions.

The expansion would enable more than one gigawatt of new clean-energy capacity on Malaysia’s national grid, Google said. The company also committed to pay for the electricity its campuses consume and the direct infrastructure costs needed to connect them to the grid, subject to local regulations.

Google said the Malaysian campuses are designed to operate at a Power Usage Effectiveness ratio of 1.12 to 1.14. PUE compares a data center’s total energy use with the energy delivered to computing equipment, with a value closer to 1 indicating less overhead. The range is a prospective design target, not an independently measured operating result.

In Negeri Sembilan, Google has separately committed $160 million to shared water infrastructure, including an off-river reservoir and a treatment plant for its planned Port Dickson campus and nearby communities. Google said the plant would be able to deliver 65 million liters of potable water per day for data-center and public use.

The $15 billion plan follows Google’s $2 billion Malaysia investment announced in 2024 for its first local data center and Google Cloud region at Elmina. Google also announced four workforce programs intended to upskill 800,000 Malaysians over five years, from 2027 through 2031.