Malaysia plans to introduce a law requiring data centre operators to disclose the number of AI accelerators they import, their power consumption, the locations of their facilities and the identities of operators and hyperscale customers, so authorities can track facilities through their operating lives rather than only at approval. Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Johari Abdul Ghani acknowledged on Thursday that some companies had rented space in Malaysian data centres to import GPUs legally and then shipped them abroad in smuggling operations, said chips imported into Malaysia are meant to be used there, and said Malaysia is prepared to share facility information with US counterparts on request; the Digital Ministry is reviewing whether existing law lets authorities act against re-export of processors covered by US export bans.
Operators would also have to pay for all the electricity capacity they reserve whether they use it or not, so a facility that secures 100 megawatts and uses 50 would still pay for the other 50, a measure meant to stop companies banking power they may not need for one to three years. Johari put approved data centre projects in Malaysia at 117, of which 55 are already operational. No timeline for the legislation was given, and the minister did not say whether operators would have to disclose GPU models and serial numbers or face on-site inspections, the gap Tom’s Hardware flags in a power-based approach: nameplate ratings (700 watts for an H100 or H200, 1,000 watts for a B200) do not match what chips draw under real workloads, so power data alone cannot count the GPUs in a building reliably.