While the global spotlight shines brightly on tools like ChatGPT-5, many Malaysian companies are turning their attention elsewhere – and it’s not where you might expect.
Rather than chasing the latest in AI hype, forward-thinking businesses in Malaysia are looking inward, opting for locally hosted, open-source AI solutions that better fit their needs, budgets, and values.
Leading this idea is real estate technology group Juwai IQI, which believes Malaysian firms can gain more by going local.
From enhanced data privacy to massive cost savings, the benefits are increasingly hard to ignore.
Kashif Ansari, Group CEO of Juwai IQI said, “You fall behind if you don’t use artificial intelligence, but costs can grow quickly.
By ‘going local,’ as I call it, a typical large Malaysian company can save up to RM1.7 million per year, depending on usage rates. You also get the benefits of data privacy and security, customisation and automation.”
Kashif Ansari, Group CEO of Juwai IQI
This “go local” approach doesn’t necessarily mean building AI from scratch.
“‘First, we are using open-source AI models that are offered by their creators for “free” to the larger community. These models are usually not quite as capable as the latest commercially available models on the market but are free of ongoing external usage costs,” explained Ansari.
“Second, we are hosting these models on our own servers. That means we never send our data to the big AI companies’ servers,” he concluded.
Ansari also assured that we can still use GPT-5, amongst others, but only for a fraction of our AI needs.
“We found that we can do most of what we need here in Malaysia by going local,” said Ansari.
For Malaysian businesses, this means full control over sensitive data while still tapping into the power of AI.
Juwai IQI’s COO and CIO, Nabeel Mungaye, breaks down the financial logic: using commercial AI services for basic business operations – such as chatbots, document summarisation, and marketing automation – could rack up over RM1.7 million annually.
“I’ve run some back-of-the-envelope numbers. A typical large Malaysian company that has embraced the use of AI for things like customer support, PDF summarisation, and marketing could end up paying over RM1.7 million (US$410,000) per year in usage fees from a service like OpenAI,” explained Mungaye.
On the other hand, running an open-source model on a local server for those same needs could cost as little as RM63,000 (US$15,000) per year. You would essentially just pay the cost of electricity and maintenance for a powerful server.”
Nabeel Mungaye, Juwai IQI’s COO and CIO
Interestingly, Mungaye also highlights that by ‘going local’, companies can train their AI on Malaysian cultural and linguistic context, including Malay, Mandarin, English and even industry-specific language and expressions. This leads to more accurate, relevant and culturally aware AI interactions.
So while the world marvels at the latest shiny tech from Silicon Valley, Malaysia’s leading firms are proving that smarter, safer, and more cost-effective AI solutions might just be right at home.
Juwai IQI was featured in theSun
Juwai IQI is the world-renowned property company that provides insights on property, locally and globally
