Malaysia considers Huawei’s AI chips for sovereign AI initiatives

Malaysia is making a calculated bet on Huawei’s AI hardware as it builds out sovereign artificial intelligence capabilities, positioning itself as one of the few countries willing to keep both American and Chinese chip suppliers on speed dial. The chip play and its fallout Back in May 2025, Malaysia announced plans to deploy roughly 3,000 Huawei Ascend AI chips by 2026 as part of a sovereign AI project. The initiative was designed to establish full-stack AI infrastructure, the kind of setup that would give the country end-to-end control over its own artificial intelligence systems rather than renting capability from foreign cloud providers. The project was driven by Skyvast, a private firm working in conjunction with DeepSeek’s large language model. Within days, the Malaysian government scrambled to distance itself from the announcement. Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching clarified that the project lacked official endorsement. She added that Huawei had not actually sold any chips in Malaysia. Huawei doubles down anyway In April 2026, Huawei inaugurated its first AI Lab and Innovation Centre located outside of China, and it chose Kuala Lumpur as the site. The facility span...