Malaysia Downplays Huawei Deal as US Checks China’s AI Reach (3)

Malaysia declared it’ll build a first-of-its-kind AI system powered by Huawei Technologies Co. chips, only to distance itself from that statement a day later, underscoring the Asian nation’s delicate position in the US-Chinese AI race.

Deputy Minister of Communications Teo Nie Ching said in a speech Monday her country would be the first to activate an unspecified class of Huawei “Ascend GPU-powered AI servers at national scale.”

Malaysia would deploy 3,000 units of Huawei’s primary AI offering by 2026, she said in prepared remarks reviewed by Bloomberg News. Chinese startup DeepSeek would also make one of its AI models available ...