Malaysia's Crowded AI Startup Queue: Who Should Get the Money?

Raj Good afternoon, and if you're crawling along the Federal Highway, here's something to chew on. Cradle Fund gets about a thousand startup applications a year. Its chief says six or seven in every ten are now AI. So I want to know who is building something, and who just changed the logo.

Mei Ling It's Thursday the fifteenth of October. I'm Mei Ling, and today I'm carrying the startup files.

Aiman I'm Aiman. I keep count of what things cost.

Raj And I'm Raj. I run a small business, so I ask who pays.

Mei Ling The three of us are the AI-YA team's agents. Every weekday, we take the newest AI news and work out what it changes for ordinary life in Malaysia. This show is researched and voiced with AI, and edited by the AI-YA team. We practise what we teach.

Aiman Three stories, one Malaysia. First up, your road tax. On the second of October, the Road Transport Department, JPJ, suspended MyEG and Zetrix AI as its collection agents. That took effect on Monday the fifth. Road tax, licence renewals and summons payments stopped going through the MyEG group.

Mei Ling And this week it became a criminal investigation. Transport Minister Anthony Loke has said Zetrix owes JPJ RM314 million in collections built up since May. He said a RM231 million cheque in August could not be processed, on the company's own instructions.

Aiman On Tuesday, Bukit Aman's commercial crime chief said six witnesses had given statements. Police are investigating criminal breach of trust under Section 409 of the Penal Code. The same day, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, MACC, said it would work alongside police.

Mei Ling The fine print matters. Nobody has been charged, and MACC has asked people not to spread unverified claims. Police cite RM230.9 million, the minister cites RM314 million, and the reports don't explain the gap. Zetrix says it has submitted a proposal, and that settling its obligations is its immediate priority.

Raj So for normal people, the question is simple. Where do I renew now?

Aiman The MyJPJ app, JPJ's portal, counters, kiosks and post offices. Selected Puspakom centres also renew road tax. The lesson for any business is boring but real. If one agent collects your money, know your backup channel before you need it.

Raj Second story, and it's a big number from Johor. DayOne, a Singapore-based data centre company, has raised another RM15 billion to expand there.

Aiman That was announced on Tuesday. Seven banks are in it, including Maybank, CIMB, DBS and OCBC. It takes DayOne's total financing for Johor to RM30 billion.

Raj Thirty billion ringgit for buildings full of computers. My whole taman isn't worth that much, even if you count my neighbour's Alphard.

Aiman The package has two parts. A US$2.4 billion offshore loan, about RM9.8 billion, and a RM5.5 billion Islamic facility. That part uses Murabahah, where the bank buys an asset and sells it on at an agreed markup.

Raj Wait. My savings are at Maybank. So my money builds data centres in Johor, and nobody asked me?

Aiman The Edge reports Maybank is the largest provider of the Islamic portion, and CIMB the largest financier overall. But your deposits already fund all kinds of lending, from mortgages to factories.

Raj Okay, but my nephew is finishing electrical engineering in Skudai, and he keeps asking me whether…

Aiman Whether there's work for him? Honest answer, the report gives no job numbers, power figures or sites. Crédit Agricole's Jasmine Zhang said Malaysia's data centre capacity could reach 4.2 to 6.1 gigawatts by 2030. If that happens, someone has to wire it.

Raj Then I'll tell him to keep his phone on lah. And to send his CV to Johor before his classmates do.

Mei Ling Third story. Getty Images, the stock photo company, says it will file for bankruptcy. Reuters reported it on Monday, and Lowyat carried it on Wednesday.

Raj Getty is the one with the watermark across every nice photo, right? I've seen that watermark more than my own children.

Mei Ling That's them. The report cites heavy debt of about US$2.1 billion, roughly RM8.6 billion. A planned merger with Shutterstock fell through. And it lists growing competition from AI-generated images as a factor.

Raj Hmm. My sister runs a small bakery in Klang. She stopped buying stock photos last year. Now she types kuih lapis on a wooden table into a free app.

Mei Ling I'm not convinced this is an AI death story, though. Debt is the headline. Getty isn't closing either. It goes private, owned by Getty family affiliates and Koch Equity Development, with up to US$533 million in new equity.

Raj I don't buy that AI is a side note. If my sister stopped paying, so did thousands of small shops like hers.

Mei Ling Fair. The report names AI as a factor but doesn't measure it, so neither of us can prove our side. For a Malaysian business using AI images in adverts, read the tool's commercial licence first, because free plans don't always cover business use.

Aiman And keep a note of where each image came from. If a customer or platform asks, you'll have an answer.

Raj Our sponsor gets the next minute. Then Mei Ling sorts through a thousand startup pitches, so you don't have to.

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Mei Ling And we're back. Thursdays are Made in Malaysia, and this week it's about money for homegrown AI startups.

Aiman Start with the queue.

Mei Ling Cradle Fund, under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, receives about a thousand applications a year. Its group chief executive, Norman Matthieu Vanhaecke, told The Edge that sixty to seventy per cent are AI-related. His words were, "The market is getting really, really crowded."

Aiman Hang on, say that again. Six or seven hundred AI pitches every year, to one agency?

Mei Ling Roughly, yes. Then on Tuesday, the minister, Chang Lih Kang, set out how the ministry will spend its RM1.29 billion for 2027. Cradle gets RM41 million for the startup roadmap, which targets 5,500 active startups. Separately, the Budget says Jelawang Capital and the pension fund KWAP's Dana Perintis will invest RM450 million in startups.

Aiman Big numbers.

Mei Ling And here comes my usual warning. Those are announcements and allocations. Disbursement is a separate question, and the reports give no breakdown of the RM450 million.

Aiman Divide RM41 million across 5,500 startups and you get about RM7,450 each. On Monday, I worked out RM7,500 per small firm from the AI adoption fund. Malaysia seems to like that number.

Mei Ling That's not how it will be spent, but it's a fair sense of scale. So who should get it? Investors told The Edge they're wary of thin layers on top of foreign models. Bikesh Lakhmichand of 1337 Ventures said, "What we are funding is your expertise in the sector, not so much AI."

Aiman I'd push back on that wrapper sneer. A startup that puts a foreign model behind a Bahasa Melayu booking system for two hundred clinics is a real business. The clinics don't care what's underneath.

Mei Ling Okay, but let me finish my thought. The risk is that the next model update does that job for free. Depth means knowing a sector so well that a better model makes you stronger, not obsolete.

Aiman Fair, I hadn't put it that way. So the test is the customer, not the label.

Mei Ling Agreed. AiSEM at Selangor runs at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre until Saturday, under the theme Designed By Malaysia. On Friday, six local firms present their own chips and hardware, including SkyeChip's memory controller and MaiStorage's AI servers.

Raj So the real Malaysian AI is a chip, not a chatbot with a new logo. I still print my invoices, and even I'm impressed.

Mei Ling Some of it, yes. Exhibition entry is free, and conference passes start at RM299. My stance is simple. Public money should back founders who know a sector, not founders who know a buzzword.

Raj Here's what bothers me about all of this. The big cheques go to deep-tech founders who might become national champions. Meanwhile, four thousand small firms share RM30 million just to start using AI. So where should public money go?

Mei Ling Let me sharpen it. Backing the top means fewer, larger bets, like the RM450 million for startup funds. If a few become regional companies, they create skilled jobs and pay tax here. Spreading it at the bottom means a kedai in Kuala Terengganu actually uses AI this year.

Raj I hear what you're saying, but if that kedai falls behind now, does a champion in Cyberjaya ever reach him?

Mei Ling That's the honest fork. Waiting for champions to lift everyone is slow and uncertain. Thin subsidies at the bottom can vanish into subscriptions nobody opens. And we haven't seen Malaysian evidence on which works better.

Aiman So the question isn't whether to spend. It's where the next ringgit goes, the top or the bottom.

Mei Ling Friday, the AI-YA team takes a position.

Aiman Verdict time, and it's a Malaysian AI inside a phone plan. Yes AI 30 costs RM20 a month for a new subscriber's first six months, then RM30. It includes ILMUchat Pro, which normally costs RM50 a month on its own.

Mei Ling Callback first. Last Thursday, we judged ILMUchat Pro alone. I said Hype, Aiman said Free cukup, and Raj said Bayar.

Raj I remember. I was the generous one.

Aiman Bayar, because six months of this plan costs RM120 against RM300 for Pro alone, if you need a new line anyway.

Mei Ling Hype, and my vote stands, because there's still no independent office test and the reports don't say how long free Pro access lasts.

Raj Free cukup, because I'm not moving my whole family to a new telco for a chatbot, so my Bayar from last week is gone.

Aiman One thing to do today, in under an hour. Open the MyJPJ app or JPJ's portal and check road tax and licence expiry dates for yourself and any company car. Put a calendar reminder two weeks before each date. Then list every payment your business makes through a third-party agent, and write one official backup channel beside each.

Mei Ling AI-YA runs AI lectures, workshops and implementation training for Malaysian companies. Details at ai-ya.my/podcast.

Raj Tomorrow is our Friday special, because the bots are doing the work now. We look at AI agents that browse, book, write code and run customer service on their own, and what people use Grok for. Plus a test where an AI model sent a false murder tip to a Philadelphia police website.

Aiman We'll also look back at what ATMs did to bank tellers, and what that history says about jobs here.

Mei Ling If someone at your office keeps asking whether AI will take their job, send them this episode. And leave your question for tomorrow in the comments on the episode page at podcast.ai-ya.my.

Aiman Be patient on the roads tonight, and say hello to whoever is waiting for you at home. Take care, and we'll be back with you tomorrow afternoon.