An Asian data center hub is quietly grappling with AI's massive costs

The artificial intelligence boom has brought with it hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and promises of economic growth . But the infrastructure required is demanding massive amounts of energy and resources. One lesser-known example of that dilemma can be found in the southern tip of Malaysia, which has quietly become one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing data center hubs amid the heightened compute demands of AI. The country's state of Johor — with a population of about 4 million people — has attracted billions' worth of projects for such data centers in recent years , including from many of the world's largest technology firms, such as Google , Microsoft and China's ByteDance . Backers of those projects have been drawn by Johor's cheap land and resources, proximity to the f