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World AI Show Malaysia 2026 returned to Kuala Lumpur on 9 and 10 September, marking the summit’s 48th global edition.
The event was held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur and brought together more than 30 speakers from government, GLCs and the private sector, including Johor Corporation deputy chief digital officer Budiman Bujang, JLL Malaysia managing director Jamie Tan, and Standard Chartered Bank transformation executive director Ganeshbabu Nagarajan.
Ts D. Jackson Raao, Principal Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), said Malaysia is at a pivotal stage in using AI as a driver of national transformation, citing responsible innovation, governance, cybersecurity and future-ready talent as key to building a trusted regional AI ecosystem.
CyberSecurity Malaysia came on as supporting partner for the event, with Datadog as lead sponsor, Magure as platinum sponsor, Bitdeer AI as gold sponsor, and Alibaba Cloud and Unison Consulting as bronze sponsors.
Sessions ran as keynotes, executive panels, fireside chats and invitation-only boardrooms, organised around four themes: AI infrastructure and sovereign cloud, enterprise AI deployment, AI in government and GLCs, and AI security and governance.
Where Does Malaysia’s AI Adoption Stand Now?
Manminder Kaur Dhillon of Supernewsroom.ai said Malaysian enterprises often get the sequencing wrong – leadership pushes AI adoption top-down before identifying what problem needs solving, creating a gap with operations teams that can turn AI adoption into an unnecessary expense.
Still, she pointed to the show’s turnout across government, MNCs and startups as a sign Malaysia is more adaptable than its regional counterparts.
Sabrina Yap, Head of Digital Transformation at Mr DIY International, said the retailer is running AI initiatives across the business at once, using Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT together, with leadership acting as first testers before pilots extend to wider teams.
Her biggest challenge has been education – training staff to question whether an AI answer is a recommendation, a deduction, or based on data that could be outdated.
Azlina Ab Aziz, Principal Assistant Director at the National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA), said the Cyber Security Act 2024 has given Malaysia’s critical infrastructure entities an important baseline, but the bigger gap now is moving from a “check-the-box” mindset to continuous resilience.
On government AI spending, she said budgets need to go beyond buying models and computing capacity to also cover securing AI data, models and infrastructure from the outset.
Low Ngai Yuen, Managing Director of AEON360, said the retail group’s advantage lies in the volume of physical customer interactions it has across retail, malls, banking and insurance, and the opportunity now is connecting those signals into a single view of the customer.
She said AI is helping shift the business from reacting to past transactions to anticipating what a customer needs next.
Organisers said the summit will return for its next edition as Malaysia works toward its 2030 AI-ready nation target.
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