Malaysia’s competition to build its country’s AI workforce has entered a new phase with Huawei’s pledge to train 30,000 local experts.
Speaking at Huawei Cloud AI Ecosystem Summit APAC 2025, Digital Minister Govind Singh Deo emphasized that this Malaysian AI Talent Development Initiative must be inclusive and inclusive, and that every segment of society must ensure that it benefits from technological advancements.
“AI-led productivity must benefit all Malaysians. No one is left and we must work together inclusively,” Gobind said in his keynote speech at the Huawei Cloud AI Ecosystem Summit APAC 2025 held during the ASEAN AI Malaysia Summit.
The Minister emphasized that technology needs to provide concrete value across all sectors through AI-assisted diagnostics for remote clinics through a cloud-based platform for small and medium-sized businesses.
Huawei’s infrastructure leadership drives talent strategy
Huawei’s commitment to developing AI talent in Malaysia comes as the company solidifies its position as a major cloud infrastructure provider. In August 2025, Gartner positioned Huawei as a leader in the magical quadrant for container management, recognising the deep expertise and strategic investments of the Cloud Native 2.0 company.
This recognition examines Huawei’s infrastructure capabilities that support Malaysia’s AI ambitions. The company’s container products, including CCE Turbo, CCE Autopilot, Cloud Container Instances (CCIs), and distributed cloud native services UCS, provide the optimal cloud-native infrastructure for managing large, scalable containerized workloads in public, distributed, hybrid clouds and edge environments.
Huawei Technologies (Malaysia) CEO Simon Sun has outlined the scope of the Malaysian AI Talent Development Initiative, targeting a wide range of experts, including students, government officials, industry leaders, think tanks, and associations.
“We have set the goal of fostering 30,000 Malaysian AI talent, consisting of students, government officials, industry leaders, think tanks, associations and more,” Sun announced during the summit, attended by around 300 regional representatives.
AI Excellence’s Technical Foundation
Huawei Cloud’s technical capabilities are well positioned to support Malaysia’s AI workforce development. The company operates a global network of 34 regions and 101 availability zones, particularly in ASEAN, including five regions and 17 availability zones, providing low-latency infrastructure essential for AI applications.
The platform supports over 160 open source models through AI cloud services, providing flexibility for development in a variety of industries. At the core is Huawei’s Pangu Multimodal model, which forms the backbone of the company’s “AI for Industries” strategy, providing tailored solutions for manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and other sectors.
Li Yin, CTO at Huawei Cloud Enterprise Intelligence, showed us how these features translate into real applications during the session “Journey to the Cloud, Heading to AI.” She shared examples of Huawei Cloud work with customers in over 30 industries, applying AI to over 500 scenarios around the world.
The Talent Development Program is based on Huawei’s existing ICT Academy and AI Talent Development Plan. This praised the Digital Minister for “creating a highly skilled, future-ready workforce with industry-related expertise.
Beyond training, Huawei is also committed to fostering 200 local AI partners through knowledge transfer and cloud solutions collaboration with top AI companies. The initiative will include encouraging AI investment in Malaysia and helping to launch new Malaysian AI entities through partnerships with local players.
Cloud Native 2.0 and AI Integration
Huawei’s advances in cloud-native 2.0 technology have been fully upgraded to incorporate intelligence, directly supporting Malaysia’s AI ambitions. The company is building a next-generation AI native cloud infrastructure powered by advanced AI technology.
Key innovations include CCE AI clusters that form the cloud-native infrastructure of CloudMatrix384 supernodes, scheduling with a large supernode topology, autoscaling that recognizes AI workload characteristics, and ultra-fast container startups that dramatically accelerate AI training and inference.
Huawei also introduced CCE Doer. It integrates AI agents throughout the container usage process and provides intelligent Q&A, recommendations, and diagnostics. The system can diagnose more than 200 critical exception scenarios with a root cause accuracy rate of over 80%, enabling automated intelligent container cluster management.
The national policy framework supports the growth of AI
The Human Resource Development announcement has been announced as Malaysia announces NCCP and established a comprehensive framework for cloud recruitment that directly supports AI capabilities development. The policy is intended for Malaysia to become a world-class cloud computing hub by 2030 and is fixed on innovation, cybersecurity, sustainability and inclusiveness.
Gobind emphasized that building an “AI Nation” under the 13th Malaysian Plan requires strengthening infrastructure, greater security, and developing local talent, and collaboration that plays a pivotal role in achieving these objectives.
“We talk about infrastructure, security and talent, but there is much we can learn from the industries in the region, from our friends and from the world about how other countries, sectors and industries have evolved,” the minister noted.
Actual applications will promote adoption
The Malaysian AI Talent Development Initiative is intended to address existing applications where AI is already impacting. Sun pointed to fraud detection in banking, predictive maintenance in factories, supply chain management, and personalized learning in schools as an area of increasing need for skilled professionals.
Huawei’s approach highlights localized partnerships to ensure that global expertise is applied in a way that meets the specific needs of ASEAN. The company introduced the AI-Native cloud infrastructure built in collaboration with local partners, showing how such partnerships can drive intelligent sector-wide upgrades.
Governance and Security Priorities
The Digital Minister emphasized the important importance of governance and regulatory frameworks, particularly as Malaysia becomes more dependent on data-driven infrastructure, to ensure that AI adoption remains safe and sustainable.
“If we build a country that is entirely dependent on data centers and data centers, we cannot afford to have a breakdown that will affect all sectors that rely on them,” Gobind warned, highlighting the need for robust infrastructure and security measures.
Government approaches include preparing policies and legal preparations that can adapt to new technologies while ensuring safety and security are not compromised. Founded in December 2024, the National AI Office has already worked with six sectors, identifying 55 potential AI use cases.
Regional impact and future outlook
Malaysia’s AI Talent Development Initiative has great significance in a broader ASEAN region where skilled AI professionals are lacking. Investments in Huawei’s local capabilities, backed by Gartner’s perceived infrastructure leadership, could position Malaysia as a regional hub of AI expertise and could attract additional technology investments and partnerships.
“The future is now. Today we need to start thinking about how we can create an ecosystem that will ensure that Malaysia is ready five years after new technologies are rolled out.”
The convergence of Huawei’s talent development commitment with Malaysia’s new cloud computing policy framework represents a critical step to building Indigenous AI capabilities while maintaining strategic partnerships with global technology leaders. Success relies on effective implementation and ensures benefits to reach all segments of Malaysian society.
(Photo: Panos Sakalakis)
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