SoftBank's Arm to Play Key Role in Malaysia's Chip Ambitions
Arm Holdings Plc has agreed to provide chip designs and technology to Malaysia over the next decade, aimed at catapulting the Southeast Asian country beyond chip assembly and into more valuable semiconductor production.
Malaysia, which packages roughly a tenth of the world's semiconductors, has inked a pact to pay the SoftBank Group Corp. -owned UK firm $250 million over a period of ten years for a slew of semiconductor-related licenses and knowhow. The government plans to use that to aid local companies design their own chips and target semiconductor exports of 1.2 trillion ringgit ($270 billion) by 2030.
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Research and advisory firm Gartner predicted in February that by 2027, the average prices of application programming interfaces for genAI will fall to less than 1% of the current average price for the same technology. That could mean even greater affordability for smaller businesses adopting AI for their businesses. In emerging markets such as those in Southeast Asia where labor costs are low, companies may feel less motivated to boost efficiency through adoption of technology. But technology can provide "much better [outcomes]" for existing business practices, said NUS Business School's Wirtz. AI is just another way to adopt technology. He compared it to the popularization of e-hailing services, which reduced the risk of tourists getting scammed by taxi drivers in foreign countries, as e-hailing apps could estimate the price of a journey. And with a tech-savvy population of entrepreneurs in economies such as Vietnam, where labor costs are low, the excitement to adopt AI remains high, according to Parida. "It's a very hungry young people," he said.
