Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Amazon Web Services (AWS) will provide up to 445,000 Malaysian government officers with its Amazon Quick AI assistant under a new national programme called Semarak AI Malaysia.
AWS announced the initiative in Kuala Lumpur on 4 November, targeting government officers, students, software companies and local communities.
The programme has three pillars: AI Negara for the public sector, AI Ekonomi for businesses and AI Rakyat for communities. AWS says it focuses on the step after initial AI adoption, equipping more Malaysians to build with AI themselves.
YB Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani, Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, said, “For Malaysia to lead in the regional AI economy, we need a workforce and a software industry that can build, not just consume, AI technology. Through Semarak AI Malaysia, AWS is building on its MYR29.2 billion commitment to Malaysia to turn that ambition into reality. This program starts with our civil servants and students, and extends to our software companies so they can develop AI solutions that serve Malaysian businesses and compete across the region.”
In the public sector, GovTech Malaysia, under the Ministry of Digital, is launching GovHub, powered by AWS’s Kiro engineering agent. The platform will run on JDN’s AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) platform, with a pilot of 500 developers in 2026 and a target of 4,000 by 2028.
Kiro uses spec-driven development, converting developers’ prompts into structured specifications for requirements, design and implementation before any code is written. AWS says this lets developers produce the intended result in fewer attempts.
Amazon Quick will also reach up to 445,000 government officers through the same AIaaS platform. According to AWS, officers can use it to analyse procurement data, synthesise policy research across agencies and identify patterns in large datasets.
On the business side, AWS says Malaysian software companies building on its cloud have grown their cloud and AI workloads by an average of about 30% between 2024 and 2025. The figure covers the period since the AWS Asia Pacific (Kuala Lumpur) Region launched in 2024.
One of them, MOCHI Technologies, is building a single AI-native platform to help more than 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage marketing, customer relationships, HR and operations.
AWS is also working with the Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation (SDEC) on the Sarawak SaaS Accelerator (SaSAR), which helps software companies build AI products on AWS. SDEC, in turn, matches them with Sarawak businesses looking to adopt AI.
The pilot cohort graduated more than 20 software companies across agriculture, automotive and medical sectors. Graduates received AWS cloud credits and mentorship, plus business guidance from SDEC, and have since formed collaborations with government agencies, energy providers and enterprise partners.
One early proof of concept is an AI-enabled software testing tool for validating applications, including mobile apps. It is currently being validated with pilot users ahead of wider deployment.
To widen reach among SMEs, AWS is working with GD XCHANGE, the solutions arm of logistics provider GDEX, and AWS distributor VSTECS. Eligible SMEs will receive six months of complimentary access to Quick and Kiro after an AI readiness assessment, with a target of 10,000 SMEs by 2028.
AWS says one retail SME already uses both tools to automate competitor-price tracking and demand forecasting. The company says this lets the business respond to market shifts in hours instead of weeks.
In education, more than 3,000 polytechnic and community college students and lecturers set a Malaysia Book of Records milestone for the largest participation in an agentic AI competition. The POLYCC Agentic AI League 2026 was run with the Ministry of Higher Education’s Jabatan Pendidikan Politeknik dan Kolej Komuniti (JPPKK).
Kiro was the competition’s primary coding tool, allowing students with no programming background to work with agentic AI concepts in natural language.
AWS has also adopted its first Malaysian school under the government’s Sekolah Angkat MADANI programme: Sekolah Kebangsaan Datuk Keramat (1) in Kuala Lumpur. The company plans to upgrade its digital and STEM facilities, train teachers in coding and robotics, and run activities in drone technology and digital safety.
Hussein Mohd Ali, Country Manager, Malaysia, AWS, said, “When the public sector leads in building with AI, it becomes the lighthouse for the rest of the country. That’s what Semarak AI Malaysia is designed to do; equip civil servants, software companies, and students with the tools to build their own AI solutions. Every ministry, every developer, and every student who builds with AI raises the bar for what’s next.”
