TikTok owner ByteDance to expand Malaysia data center footprint in $2.1bn AI deal

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TikTok parent company ByteDance is expanding its data center footprint in Malaysia as it spends RM10 billion ($2.13bn) on an AI hub.

Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s investment, trade, and industry minister, revealed the news following a meeting with Helena Lersch, the vice president of TikTok.

Writing on Twitter/X, Zafrul said: “ByteDance intends to expand its data center facilities with an additional investment of RM1.5 billion ($317m).”

He added: “This additional investment by ByteDance will undoubtedly help Malaysia achieve its target of growing the digital economy to 22.6% of Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product by 2025.”

Details of this additional data center investment have not been shared by ByteDance. DCD has approached the company for comment.

ByteDance is the anchor tenant at Bridge Data Centres (BDC) MY06 hyperscale facility in the Sedenak Tech Park, Johor, so may well be investing in more space at this data center.

MY06 opened in 2022 with 110MW of capacity, with BDC claiming it is the largest data center of its kind in Malaysia. However, Yondr is planning to build a 300MW campus at the tech park and last month secured a $150m loan from the World Bank Group to help finance the project.

Johor is one of Malaysia’s biggest data center markets, and last week it was announced that real estate firms UEM Sunrise and Logos plan to build a 360MW campus on a 30-hectare site in Gerbang Nusajaya, Johor.