Tech Stories

Issue #55

Hello Reader,

I took a week off with my family last week, which is why there was no newsletter last Sunday. When I got back to work on Tuesday, I was met with an avalanche of stories and had to make some tough calls on which ones to pursue.

For this newsletter, I want to talk about AI is changing the face of robotics and the state of data centres in Johor. And oh, I'll be at SIJORI Cloud & Datacenter Convention 2025 in Singapore. Do ping me if you are in town and would like to catch up.

Robots and AI

I attended an Asus AIoT event on Friday. Amid the presentations by Nvidia and Asus, I was reminded of how AI is rapidly reshaping the robotics industry. The impact may not be immediately visible yet, but the ripples are already forming - and they could very well trigger an avalanche of change in time.

What do I mean?

You see. Training robots used to be very challenging and painful. It required engineers with specialised knowledge to manually program motion sequences in, which increased the cost dramatically. Moreover, the programming was inflexible, which made it impossible to adapt to changes in tasks or environments.

So what changed?

Two developments happened over the years.

Machine learning made it possible for robots to learn from data, allowing for real-time adaptation. On the flip side, these algorithms required large, high-quality datasets. And you guessed it — collecting such data is time-consuming, expensive, and potentially impractical — think hazardous locations, accident scenarios, and niche environments.
Generative AI took things further by allowing robots to be trained in virtual environments. This dramatically accelerates learning, reduces the need for costly real-world training, and enables a more diverse range of training scenarios. Robots gain new skills faster and adapt better thanks to these richer simulated environments.

And wouldn’t you know it, Nvidia is hard at work on what it believes will be the next multi-trillion-dollar industry: robotics and physical AI. As I mentioned in May, Nvidia's Jensen Huang spent a substantial amount of time at his Computex 2025 keynote talking about robotics and physical AI.

One Singapore startup is already working to incorporate generative AI in a big way into its existing product. Crown Digital IO created a robot barista called Ella, which was showcased at the Asus event I attended.

(Read "Robot barista by S'pore startup offers a glimpse of the future" here.)

Founder Keith Tan told me he’s working to add new AI capabilities, including the ability to converse with waiting customers in a way that mimics a human barista. This includes visual tracking via a fish-eye camera and short-term memory for coherent multi-party exchanges. Multiple AI models will be used, quantised to run entirely on local hardware that includes an RTX 4000 GPU.

It’s still early days, but there’s a case to be made that robots could one day eclipse AI in impact.

Johor's data centre growth

In Johor, recent developments suggest that a short-term rationalisation may be underway. A few signs point to this: a rise in electricity costs, localised resource constraints, and indications that some hyperscalers are eyeing Thailand for their next deployments.

It is not without irony that my last newsletter two weeks ago, I talked about how 60% of Malaysia's data centre capacity will be in Johor by 2030. This revelation was shared by Malaysia's Trade Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz.

I believe both can be true. Johor has reached critical mass as a regional data centre hub and is now too significant to simply fade into the sunset. The current slowdown feels more like a speed bump as rationalisation takes place. Data centres are still being built, and new players are still considering Johor.

It’s just growing at a slower pace than the rocketship momentum of before.

(Read"Is Johor's blistering data centre growth slowing?" here.)

SIJORI Week 2025

Speaking of Johor, this feels like the right moment to highlight that SIJORI Week 2025 is almost upon us. "SIJORI" stands for Singapore, Johor, and the Riau Islands (think Batam) - a region that has become a key data centre hub in APAC.

I’ll be at the SIJORI Cloud & Datacenter Convention (CDC) in Singapore on 10 July, where I’ll moderate a couple of panels. I’ll also be at the SIJORI CDC pre-event networking drinks on the evening of 9 July.

As I mentioned earlier, feel free to drop me a note if you’re in town and would like to catch up.

You can reach me by replying to this email - I always make an effort to reply, even if it's a simple "thank you."

Have a wonderful week ahead.

Regards,
Paul Mah.

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