Energy is today's most important commodity.
Developing markets like ASEAN need energy to power wealthier households, expanded infrastructure, and growing industries.
The coming AI boom in both ASEAN and the GCC will heighten this dilemma, as the new technology unlocks huge productivity gains yet relies on power-hungry data centers.
Can the revival of centuries-old trading links between the Middle East and the rest of Asia help create the energy sector of the future?
We'll explore how focused investments and green energy innovation could help sate the developing world's need for energy, while building long-lasting trade relationships at the same time.

AI x Energy: Energy Security for an AI Enabled World

Conferences

In our next session, we are going to talk about AI and energy and how do we achieve energy security in an AI enabled world. Developing markets like ASEAN need energy to power wealthy households and growing industries, but AI is only going to make this problem more complicated as data centers consume more and more power. Our next set of speakers will explore just how to achieve energy security against this backdrop. Please welcome to the stage Han Yo, executive director for YPL International, and Patrick Zong, the founding managing partner of M31 Capital. They'll be joined by Alison Chanel, Fortune editor in chief for a conversation on AI and energy. All right, everyone, we're between you and lunch, so we're gonna make this as interesting as possible, um, and I've got two, well established guests here to help me do that. Um, so first, if you guys could just say a little bit about yourself, we have Han and we have Patrick here as well to talk about where we are in the energy transition. And where we are in the AI transition, so much is happening and as investors and as leaders of major companies, you guys are well seated to see all those trends. Um, so Han, maybe we could start with you. What are you most focused on right now? Thank you. Um, maybe just to give some context to everyone in the room, I can just give a quick introduction. Uh, my name is Han Yo. I'm the executive director of YTL Power. Uh, YTL is a family business, I'm 3rd generation. Um, it was started by my grandfather 70 years ago. And um we are a Malaysian-based company, um and also one of the largest conglomerates in infrastructure in the region. So, uh we started off in construction and we've kind of moved on into multiple industries. Um I focus on infrastructure. So in infrastructure, we um we were the first independent power producer in Malaysia in the 90s and in Singapore, we produced about 26% of Singapore's energy, electricity. And in the UK we have a company called Wessex Water where we do water solutions um in the west, uh, southwest of England, a bit like Thames Water, uh, but in the west of England. Um, but what's interesting for us since we're talking about energy and AI is that recently we've made a big push into AI and into data centers. So, um, in Singapore, we realized that a lot of our customers wanted green energy in Singapore, which they could not get. So we bought a 2008 campus, 26 kilometers from Singapore in Johor, and we built out a 500 megawatt data center campus. Powered by solar, which is one of the largest in the region, if not in the world. And as a result, you know, we, we have a partnership with Nvidia, where we're deploying um the DJX cloud. So we're one of 5 partners uh for Nvidia, um, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and um Meta, I think is the the other ones and it's YTL. So we're quite proud of that. And um we are, you know, looking to invest more in AI space, data centers, GPU as a service to see how else we can bring more solutions to the region. Yeah, I mean there's huge multi-billion dollar deals coming into the data centers in Malaysia and so much that I'd love to talk about there, but first I wanna talk, Patrick, what's top of mind for you at M31 Capital? Right, um, so just to share a little bit of my background, um. I actually have a long um kind of record of investing in American companies, um, but also later stage in my life and also look at many of the Chinese companies and European companies. So I feel like um I have a global perspective when I look at things. Um, and, uh, this time with AI and um this is how I see it. By the way, Um, I guess philosophically, if you look at our history, human history, I think there are 3 things that matter, uh, if you're as investor looking at Number one is technology, I would have called that buys, and the second is, is really atoms, is all the physical products. And the third is money. These are the 3 areas you tend to see very big companies emerging. But now if you look at bytes, essentially energy powers. Technology, the whole compute thing is start to blend sort of the lines between um energy and and and and technology into one thing. The second area is the physical products where the atoms are. And this is where I'm really interested when you bring AI to it, then you start to see really smart solutions for a lot of things like robots and things like that. Um, then the third area, money itself is actually becoming a storage of information with bytes. So essentially, what I'm trying to say is the world we're looking at right now. From every thread that has created so much wealth, prosperity for all of us in our history, they start to merge in one area, that's the world of bytes. So the compute is everything we should be thinking about. Um, right now, I, so here's the thing. I think unfortunately, we live in the world, there's a lot of noise right now. And the people got distracted a little bit, but we are actually in front of exponential growth of things. If I may, Alison, I just want to give you one quick example to help illustrate what I mean by exponential growth. I have 2 children and 12 and 14. I sit with them, I said, OK, try to fold a piece of paper that is a 4 size paper. If you fold it 52 times, you know, guess where this thing is going to land. It's going to land in the moon. But when they try, they can fold it to 7th and 8th time. They can't do it anymore. The whole thing is, there is a bottleneck and so you need require a breakthrough technology for you to break through that 7th or 8th time and to get on that curve. So right now, I think we are seeing some of the bottlenecks. But the curve is distinctively exponential. That's the world we live in. So with that energy and the bytes, essentially for me, it's the same thing. So, um, yeah, and you have to look at energy infrastructure. So with the onset of AI, the energy demands are set to grow exponentially. Um I'm curious, what does that mean for the transition to green energy? Is that going to stall it? I mean, at a certain point for energy security, you need to be consistent and you need it to be you need to be affordable and still it seems like we're a long way off from renewables being the promise that we all hope that they can be. We know in the future they will be, but the AI demand is here and it's coming fast. I'm curious how you all think about that trade-off. OK, I can go ahead. Um, this is basically I think the biggest dilemma that energy industry is facing right now. So what we've seen is a huge spike in demand for electricity and energy. Um, due to AI and where a lot of the hyper scalers and everyone involved in this industry had very strong green policies, um, they've kind of taken a backseat because now it's a race to get compute to what Patrick was saying. Without compute, you can't even, you know, get anywhere in AI. So what we have done um in our data center campus is that we realize that in the future, when all of the demand kind of Kind of doesn't die down, but it um meets um normalizes. Green energy still has a big role to play in this energy transition. And so that's why we invested in building out solar farms to power the data centers because we think that we do have to be responsible when it comes to green energy and AI deployment. In Singapore, we're also building a new power plant, 600 megawatt facility, which is hydrogen ready. Which also means that we can power that with green hydrogen, and that's where we're talking to the government to see how we can plant data centers next to that, so that we can actually have green data centers to power the future of AI, um, but it's definitely something that has not been spoken of as much recently, which I think, you know, um, should also be part of the agenda. And Patrick, are you making, um, many green investments these days? Are you seeing that as a place where startups are really innovating and are there innovative solutions that you're investing in in the space that could help? Um, I, I think when we come down to Capa, essentially, you know, if you need to build data centers and all this, um, and there is inevitably when the news is out, everybody got so excited about everything. There's a boom and bust cycle. Um, but having said this, is depending on where the curve is, I think this time the curve is pretty steep. Um, and, um, so, so one thing. Um, I'm doing this, um, I want to be. I want to be very knowledgeable of what's going on for real time, but also I'm not I'm patient. Uh and um I, I still see today, unfortunately, the world behaves a little bit like this. There are a lot of information gaps from market to market, from technology to technology. You know, Han just mentioned, right, and that's when we talk about um the green thing, and there's a lot of technologies involved um from um Solar wind to um to natural gas and um to nuclear and to hydrogen, um, and to understand where the gaps are and also to understand where the strengths are in different geographies, and hopefully as the investor, you can bring them together. So, uh, one thing I've been doing a lot is um I bring some of the best. Um, technology companies in this area as we travel, we travel together, sometimes 20 of us, 20 CEOs, we travel to the Middle East, we travel to Europe, and we, so we see a lot, we talk to a lot of people, and to help everybody really to understand, um, you know, what's going on in different places. Um, and what are the big takeaways as you're of you traveling with these companies? what you just took a team of, um, energy entrepreneurs to the Middle East, um, anything that we should bring back here for the knowledge that you guys learned? The gaps are huge. Um, I Again, and I, I've been around for quite a long time as an investor. Um, I start to see, um, and of course, I mean, from the national security reason that you want to replicate supply chain, but I think it's just getting harder because there's a big gaps, uh, and with different sets of technology. Um, you know, in the US there are a lot of, um, and, and, and, and, and people, they, they go to Home Depot, they buy all the tools, and they build a house. So essentially, you needed to find the best tools you can find. Um, and, but I think they're just in different places. And also, by the way, the other thing is, it's not just about the technology, the tools, it's also about the process. I think, um, and a lot of times I see the the the operators, um, They have the best equipment. Um, but somehow, if you look at um their operating metrics, it's not as strong. They just don't have the right experience. They think they could because they have money, they have um um and and equipment, you need to have expertise. So I wanna um focusing back on the ASEAN region um and. Uh, YTL has a huge presence here, obviously Malaysia being based here, um, and you're at the heart of the data centers which are popping up seems like left and right, um, it's become quite the hotbed for for the sector. I'm curious, what do you think it is about Malaysia and ASEAN in particular that it can offer as we are, um, building the data centers of the future that could accommodate all of the energy demand and how should we think about the energy demand as they're being built? Well, I think if you look at ASEANN as a block, we have 700 million people and so there are a lot of people to be served, even from an influencing point of view. So in the long term, there will be huge demand for data centers in ASEAN. Um, Singapore traditionally has been the hub for data centers because it has invested in huge undersea cable links to the rest of the world, direct, um, undersea cables to the US, to Europe, to China, and so that really is the hub. Um, unfortunately for Singapore, The bottleneck now is actually in natural resources because without enough electricity or water, you're not able to kind of roll out data centers at scale. And this is where, like I mentioned, Johor, um, being right next to Singapore on the border, um, has become I think the largest growing data center, um, place in the world, where Singapore a few years ago had 600 to 700 megawatts. Johor is now tracking to about 1 or 2000 to be deployed um in the next year or so. So you can see that there is huge demand um for that. The other thing is that I think there is, um, I think our Prime Minister alluded to the fact that ASEAN is stable, you know, even within this kind of uh geopolitical climate, what you see is that um that ASEAN is neutral and also pretty safe from wars, natural disasters and stuff like that, and also traditionally has been the bridge between US and China. So as long as ASEAN can play that role, I think, you know, there will be space for ASEAN to play there and also to kind of um serve the inherent local demand. So it seems like it's a great way to bring in a giant companies from all over the world, um. I'm curious, do you feel like the resources will continue to be upheld? Like, is there too much demand on the system because I know Singapore kind of put an ax on some of what's happening in Malaysia just because of the resourcing being limited, um, and also it doesn't seem to bring a lot of jobs to the economy currently like so how can we how can Malaysia take advantage of the interest in this area and turn that into jobs. Yeah, so when we build out a data center campus, we thought it would take about 10 years to fill, but even now we have more than 200 megawatts of capacity operational. Now, um, what Malaysia had, what the whole world did not have, um, was the fact that we had an oversupply of electricity. Um, which, you know, whether it was luck or, you know, very good planning, um, Malaysia had power readily available at a point in time when CheBT exploded, when AI really came on the scene, and a lot of other countries were struggling to kind of keep up with the pace. So that Kind of prompted the first phase of this rollout. Now, going forward, if AI really is going to consume as much energy as everyone says it will be, then there will also have to be a question of prioritization. And I think even our Ministry of Trade here is saying that, you know, um, Data centers now, even though they're hosted in Malaysia, we also have to look at it from a strategic angle, because if it takes up all our water resources and all our electricity, you know, will that affect the people um in terms of pricing, availability of resources. So, um, I think governments will also have to think strategically how to prioritize these resources. As you said, um, data centers don't create the most amount of jobs, but What is important for governments is also not just get data and investments, but to build the entire ecosystem around it. And that's why at YTL what we're, what we're doing is not just building a data center infrastructure or GPU infrastructure, we're also investing in LLMs. We're investing in solutions for sovereign AI that the government and people at large can use and to benefit from with the data centers hosted in this country. That makes sense. Um, so one question I have for you is just the pace of change, both of you as investors, and I know you have a fund also that you manage, um, the pace of change is so great both in the energy sector and in AI, um, how can you be sure when you're putting your money in that this won't just be something that is made irrelevant. In a year, I mean, I think you know in the US we all saw the deep like seek moments of like, wait, maybe it doesn't take a gazillion dollars to make really, really great LLM um those moments seem to be happening more and more and more and as investors like how do you make sure what you're investing in when it pertains to energy and AI is something that will stick. Can you be sure? Do you want to take that first? I think for this is, um, you just, #1, you've got to be patient and #2, uh, When the technologies, the cycle becoming shorter. Then you start, you needed to spend a lot of time to really understand which team you're trying to back. Uh, some of the best companies, I remember, I'll call them a generational names back in the past. They're just a house of innovation. They continue to innovate. They're not one trick pony. Um, it's for me, when I spend time with the entrepreneurs, I spend the most of the time to talk about What can they, what, what is the potential with everything they're trying to do, how they come up with the PMF and what are the viable venues for them to consider in the future and how do you, how do them translate into actions? You're absolutely right. Right now, I think the product cycle becoming much shorter, and today you're like everybody knows, and in a year you just disappear. And if you're an investor, your money disappear. Um, and I think with that, and by the way, the other thing is, um, I shared with you, I was with Eric Schmidt, we in, in, in the US about 2 months ago, we shared a talk. Um, and we talked about three things. Uh, when we look at businesses. Number 1 is the curve. We love exponential curve. We love the products, they're 10 times better. The second thing is, I think most of us start to forget. We are the generation that benefit from networks. Networks is a network of people and the network is the products you do. Do they have a feature of networks in it? For example, electricity can be decentralized network of distribution, all that stuff. And the third thing is you must look at everything from products perspective. And trying to understand not only the PMF but also understand the, the where the barrier is. A lot of times it's not in the product itself, is in the whole process, and also the margins and everything. And so that's a whole kind of like pretty deep and broad stuff we can talk about, but But today it's an interesting thing. We're getting a new era uh with this exponential curves, but a lot of techniques you use to set up companies hasn't changed. Well, I guess from my perspective, Patrick's the expert, right? So whatever he invests in, we just want to back. That's right. And um the way to do it is by investing in infrastructure. So if we provide the picks and the shovels to everyone who want to go into AI who are building AI solutions, especially in the region, we think that, you know, even though certain technologies might work better than others. You know, you still need electricity, you still need power, you still need data centers. So that's how we approach that. And then when we see um technologies become more mature or a bit more commoditized, then we think about how we can take these products and technologies and then integrate them into our existing businesses. Like I mentioned to you, we're starting a digital bank in partnership with C Limited, which is like the Amazon of Southeast Asia. And when we launch this next month, it will be an AI first bank. So you'd be paying with, you know, you'd be paying bills by taking photos of it rather than, you know, traditionally having to key in, you know, SWIFT codes and calling a private banker. The AI chatbot is your private banker. And so these technologies we think are at a point in time where they're mature enough for us to be able to deploy at scale and, you know, make the most of the investments that, you know, and the money that he's deploying. All right, well, best of luck with that launch. It's great to hear, very exciting, and thank you both for sharing your thoughts. um, thank you to all of you for being here. Thank you.