Oracle Corp. plans to invest more than $6.5 billion to establish a public cloud region in Malaysia, aiming to meet the country’s growing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud services.

The investment will allow Malaysian businesses to leverage AI infrastructure and services, and migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle cloud infrastructure, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Malaysia’s Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, welcomed the move, which supports the government’s plan to create 3,000 smart factories by 2030. Oracle’s multi-billion-dollar commitment underscores Malaysia’s potential as a premier Southeast Asian destination for digital investments, the minister said.

Tech giants such as Microsoft Corp., Google and ByteDance have unveiled several large-scale investments in Southeast Asia in recent months, much of it part of efforts to develop infrastructure to meet the growing computational needs of AI systems.

The Malaysia initiative would bring Oracle’s footprint in Asia-Pacific to 12 public cloud regions, and comes as the Southeast Asian country looks to position itself as an AI hub.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Tuesday announced a plan to establish regulations to boost adoption of the technology and draw in investments to build up its digital infrastructure.

The country is setting up a national office to coordinate all AI-related initiatives and drive adoption across key sectors, he said at a groundbreaking ceremony with Google for a $2 billion data center and cloud region initiative.

Southeast Asian countries including Singapore and Malaysia have been attracting billions of dollars of investment for data centers, cloud computing and AI.

In May, Amazon.com said it will spend $9 billion to expand its cloud services in Singapore. In April, Microsoft said it would pump $1.7 billion into new cloud and AI infrastructure in Indonesia.

According to a report published by Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, Malaysia is poised to witness significant growth in data center investments over the next few years, driven by an influx of operators like AirTrunk, Equinix, and Princeton Digital Group.

Key hubs like Cyberjaya, Kuala Lumpur, and Johor Bahru are expected to see heightened activity, hosting most of the country’s data centers.