The Malaysian state of Johor is debuting a sprawling new innovation sandbox, bolstering its plans to construct a “regional champion” alongside the border with Singapore.
The 7,300-acre growth—named Ibrahim Technopolis (IBTEC)—is situated throughout the Johor-Singapore Particular Financial Zone, a brand new strategic partnership between Singapore and Malaysia meant to create over 20,000 jobs for individuals on each side of the causeway. Designed to be Asia’s largest innovation sandbox, it would focus high-value industries like medtech, logistics, knowledge facilities and agritech.
IBTEC, formally launched on Dec. 2, will make “manufacturing smarter, provide chains extra resilient and operations extra environment friendly,” mentioned developer JLand Group, the actual property arm of Johor Company, in a press assertion.
The innovation park is a part of a broader plan to faucet Johor’s proximity to Singapore to draw investments from high-tech trade and different superior manufacturing.
Malaysia and Singapore formally launched the particular financial zone earlier this 12 months. A part of the settlement includes measures to make it simpler to journey forwards and backwards between Singapore and Johor, already one of many busiest land border crossings on this planet.
Officers have excessive hopes for the SEZ. The purpose is to make it a “regional champion,” and never simply “an industrial park with a nicer brochure,” YB Lee Ting Han, chair of the Johor State Funding, Commerce, Client Affairs and Human Sources Committee, mentioned on the Fortune Innovation Discussion board on Nov. 17.
Johor, and Malaysia basically, provides decrease prices and larger entry to assets like land for overseas corporations, whilst these companies proceed to base higher-value actions in costlier Singapore.
“Whereas Johor provides land and scale, Singapore provides capital and pace. So that is the chance that I really feel we have to capitalize [on], the place we will complement one another,” Datuk Syed Mohamed Syed Ibrahim, Johor Company’s president and CEO, informed the viewers on the Fortune Innovation Discussion board on Nov. 17.
Tapping the info heart growth
Demand for knowledge facilities has skyrocketed in response to the AI growth. Southeast Asian international locations are hoping to draw new knowledge heart investments from operators in search of low cost energy and proximity to booming markets within the area.
New financial complexes like IBTEC have sprouted in response, designed to deal with and handle essential IT infrastructure offering computational energy to coach AI fashions on huge datasets.
Singapore’s small land mass and dear industrial energy tariffs have pushed traders to look north; Johor’s energy tariffs stand at 13.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, virtually half of the 23.9 cents charged by its neighboring city-state.
StepEast, an information heart hub inside IBTEC, has already secured greater than 30 billion Malaysian ringgit ($7.28 billion) in investments from 11 worldwide operators, reported the Enterprise Instances, a Singaporean newspaper. This contains massive tech conglomerates like Microsoft.
“We’re constructing the infrastructure, programs and execution capability in order that traders can are available quicker and develop with extra certainty,” Datuk Sr. Akmal Ahmad, the group managing director of JLG and JCorp’s director of actual property and infrastructure division, mentioned within the Dec. 2 assertion.
Information heart operators are paying consideration. “Johor is including knowledge heart capability at a pace and scale I’ve not seen ever anyplace else,” Rangu Salgame, CEO of Singapore-based knowledge heart operator Princeton Digital Group, informed Fortune in April.
Advantages for native companies and SMEs
Regardless of being a mission of huge scale, IBTEC will concentrate on the wants of SMEs and native Malaysian companies, JLG added. The event will provide them shared amenities and plug-in areas, the place they’ll collaborate with bigger trade gamers.
“We are going to measure IBTEC’s success not solely by the investments it attracts, however by the way it helps Malaysians and Johoreans transfer up the worth chain—as employees, entrepreneurs and communities,” mentioned Akmal Ahmad. “That’s how we intend to show the actual impression of this ecosystem.”
“We actually want to have the ability to join our SMEs to international provide chains and to create manufacturers owned throughout the zone,” Lee, from the Johor state authorities, mentioned on the Fortune Innovation Discussion board.
IBTEC will even allow Malaysian start-ups to raised partake in regional provide chains, open new doorways for native entrepreneurs, and additional the Southeast Asian nation’s purpose of attaining sustainable, innovation-led growth.
“IBTEC is an funding for the subsequent technology, and a sign that Johor is able to compete on a distinct frontier,” Syed Ibrahim added in JLG’s press assertion.
Malaysia as a complete has attracted 285 billion Malaysian ringgit ($69 billion) in accredited funding (or proposed funding tasks which have obtained all the mandatory licenses) within the first three quarters of the 12 months, up 13% year-on-year, based on a Dec. 3 report from Nomura. The state of Johor alone is chargeable for virtually a 3rd of that whole, with investments into the state totaling 91 billion ringgit ($22 billion) within the first 9 months of 2025.
Nomura now expects Malaysia’s economic system to develop by 5.2% subsequent 12 months, up from an earlier forecast for 4.0%. “We count on sturdy investment-led progress to persist into 2026, sustained by the implementation of extra reforms and infrastructure tasks, and progress within the Johor-Singapore Particular Financial Zone (JS-SEZ),” Nomura’s analysts wrote of their Dec. 3 report.
