The Huawei Cloud AI Ecosystem Summit APAC 2025 marked a significant milestone in showcasing the transformative power of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in driving economic growth across Malaysia and the wider ASEAN region. The summit underscored the immense potential of AI to reshape industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and smart city development, while also placing strong emphasis on ethical and sustainable implementation.
The event was officiated by Malaysia’s Minister of Digital, YB Gobind Singh Deo, who, in his keynote address, highlighted the country’s commitment to building an AI-powered future that serves not only national interests but also the broader ASEAN community. He noted that the National AI Office (NAIO) is fast-tracking the completion of the AI Technology Action Plan 2026–2030, alongside the development of regulatory frameworks to ensure that AI adoption remains ethical, sustainable, and value-driven. Gobind stressed that these efforts are in line with Malaysia’s Digital Economy Blueprint and initiatives such as Malaysia Digital (MD), further strengthened through strategic partnerships with global technology leaders like Huawei.
In his closing remarks, Simon Sun, Chief Executive Officer of Huawei Technologies (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, announced the ambitious Huawei Malaysia AI Talent Programme, aimed at nurturing 30,000 AI talents in Malaysia over the next three years. The programme will engage a wide range of participants, including students, government officials, industry leaders, think tanks, and associations. Sun also revealed plans to cultivate 200 local AI partners through strategic collaborations, knowledge sharing, and partnerships with top AI companies from China. Huawei Cloud will serve as a bridge to attract AI investments from Chinese companies into Malaysia, fostering homegrown innovation and creating new AI-focused enterprises in the country.
These initiatives are part of the broader Huawei Cloud APAC AI Ecosystem Initiative, which was officially announced by Sun in the presence of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, YAB Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim, during the opening day of the ASEAN AI Summit 2025. The Prime Minister’s attendance signified the Malaysian government’s strong commitment to accelerating AI development through public-private partnerships and comprehensive capacity-building measures.
Aka Dai, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Marketing, emphasised in his keynote titled “Accelerate Intelligence, Ignite Smart ASEAN” that AI and cloud technologies are now the driving forces behind innovation and growth. With 26 years of investment in ASEAN and seven years of Huawei Cloud operations in the region, the company plans to further expand its local footprint, offering agile, inclusive, and cutting-edge AI solutions to boost economic competitiveness and improve societal well-being.
Huawei Cloud’s strength lies in its three core capabilities: a global infrastructure of 34 Regions and 101 Availability Zones, including five Regions and 17 AZs in ASEAN; an open AI Cloud Service supporting over 160 mainstream open-source models; and its industry-leading Pangu Models, a suite of multimodal models designed for specific industry needs under its “AI for Industries” strategy.
On Day 2 of the ASEAN AI Summit, the Huawei Cloud AI Ecosystem Summit gathered around 300 industry delegates and featured key insights from Li Yin, Chief Technology Officer of Huawei Cloud Enterprise Intelligence. In her session, “Leap to Cloud, Heading to AI,” she detailed Huawei Cloud’s extensive collaborations across more than 30 industries and 500 application scenarios worldwide. Through the Pangu foundational large model, the ModelArts AI toolchain, and proven engineering practices, Huawei Cloud enables enterprises to leverage their own data to build tailored AI models with rapid development, fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning capabilities.
Li outlined three main priorities for Huawei Cloud moving forward: strengthening a secure and trustworthy AI computing foundation; driving industry transformation through enterprise AI assistants, AI video applications, and solutions for sectors such as smart cities, mining, railways, healthcare, and manufacturing; and expanding the AI ecosystem through collaborative partnerships.
The summit also featured prominent speakers including Head of the National AI Office (NAIO) Malaysia Shamsul Izhan Abdul Majid, Vice President of iFLYTEK Open Platform William Zhou, Co-Founder of Zetrix Dato Fadzli Shah, Managing Director of TrustDecision Malaysia Henry Li Nan, and Multimedia University’s Professor Ts. Dr. Ting Choo Yee. Together, they reinforced the shared vision of building a robust, inclusive, and forward-looking AI ecosystem for Malaysia and the ASEAN region.