this Southeast Asia 500 The fastest growing companies can thank the rapid growth of the AI boom. The generated AI has driven a surge in investment to the data center, which provides the infrastructure for storing, processing, and distributing data, which is key to running AI applications.
Malaysia has gained a large share of this investment. attract Over the past 18 months, billions of dollars in deals like Google, Oracle and Microsoft.
Some of these hypes have promoted the fate of some Malaysian companies, including nationgatean electronic manufacturing service provider.
The company generated 5.27 billion Malaysian ringgit (US$1.6 billion) revenue last year, enough to rank it at 243rd in the Southeast Asia 500. Even more shockingly, the company’s revenue grew by more than 720%, making it the fastest-revenue company this year.
Nationgate also made a profit of $342 million, up 163% from the previous year.
The company’s revenue in data computing is huge, contributing 88% this year, compared with 17% in 2023. NationGate also works with the automotive and telecommunications sectors.
More than half of national Gate’s income comes from Malaysia. Another third comes from Singapore. It can be said that these two countries are data centers in Southeast Asia.
One of Nationgate’s main businesses is assembling AI products. It has a key advantage in this area because Nvidia’s OEM partners in Southeast Asia only. This means NationGate is the only company in the region to gather NVIDIA height-height graphics processing units (GPUs) into AI servers. NVIDIA’s GPUs are by far the most commonly used in high-performance AI applications.
Nationgate believes that there is “huge potential” in AI, and its entry into AI server manufacturers will help it gain “double-digit” annual growth rate in Southeast Asia and global data center investment.
But the AI boom also brings risks.
Both Malaysia and Singapore face scrutiny assert both countries are accused of being controlled U.S. chips to travel to China. In particular, U.S. officials are reportedly studying whether Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has circumvented U.S. export controls with the help of third parties in Singapore.
In March, Singapore’s Law and Home Minister K Shanmugam, explain The servers of chips controlled under US export control appear to have been sent to Malaysia. Following the allegations, Malaysian Trade Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz said officials are investigating and vowing to take necessary actions against local companies engaged in fraud.
More broadly, Southeast Asian countries comply with U.S. rules on the amount of AI chips that the United States may purchase. (The Trump administration canceled the proposal last month.)
Nationgate has distanced itself from the subject and clarified that it has not been involved in the investigation. But investors are still scared. Nationgate shares have fallen by about 40% this year.
