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Microsoft CEO unveils US$1.7 billion outlay over four years in Indonesia to build major AI and cloud computing infrastructure
- The US software giant also pledged to help train 2.5 million people in Southeast Asia with AI skills, including 840,000 in Indonesia
- Indonesia has offered the island of Bali and the nation’s new capital Nusantara as potential sites for Microsoft’s research facility and data centre
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Microsoft Corp will invest US$1.7 billion to build out cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in Indonesia, betting on Southeast Asia’s biggest economy to spur growth.
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Company chief executive Satya Nadella announced the outlay, to be made over four years, after meeting with President Joko Widodo in Jakarta on Tuesday. The US software giant also pledged to help train 2.5 million people in Southeast Asia with AI skills, including 840,000 in Indonesia.
Microsoft’s leader is on a three-country tour of Southeast Asia. The region, once neglected by corporate chieftains who focused on giant economies such as China and India, has become more popular of late as CEOs jockey for position during a time of rising geopolitical tensions.
Southeast Asia is one of the biggest battlegrounds for technology giants and start-ups from China and the US. Before Nadella, Nvidia Corp’s Jensen Huang and Apple’s Tim Cook also paid high-profile visits to the region, chasing a young and tech-savvy population as Chinese growth wanes.
“The intelligence revolution is going to be the next major bend in the curve of GDP growth,” Nadella told hundreds of attendees at the Microsoft Build: AI Day event in Jakarta, including software developers, ministers and enterprise chief executives. “This is going to have a real impact even in Indonesia where we will have in the region 10 per cent to 12 per cent extra growth.”
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AI has become the primary agenda for Nadella as he traverses countries and conferences from India to the World Economic Forum, exhorting nations and businesses to invest in the technology and train their populations, while talking up the potential of AI to re-make entire economies. He is slated to visit Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur later this week.
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