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Malaysia’s Plantations Are Cashing In on AI

For decades, Malaysia’s palm oil industry has been known for all the wrong reasons: deforestation, pollution, and the destruction of rainforests.

But now, as covered by Anuradha Raghu and Ram Anand in this intriguing Bloomberg piece, the same companies once criticized for environmental damage are moving into a very different business - producing renewable energy to power the AI boom.

AI data centers (the massive buildings that run AI models) need huge amounts of land and electricity. Malaysia has suddenly become one of Asia’s fastest-growing data center hotspots, with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and ByteDance investing more than $34B into new server farms across the country.

The catch? Malaysia is running short on both land and power. In Johor, nearly all land is already taken, and some new data centers won’t get electricity until late 2026.

That’s where the palm oil companies come in: they own enormous stretches of land, and they’re now converting parts of their plantations into solar farms and data center parks to supply AI companies with the clean energy and space they need.

For example, Malaysia’s largest plantation group, SD Guthrie, has earmarked 10,000 hectares to build solar farms and industrial parks - it could generate enough power to run 10 large data centers.

There’s a strong business reason behind it: A Maybank report found that solar power can be 50 times more profitable than growing palm oil. For companies sitting on hundreds of thousands of hectares, the opportunity is huge.

As SD Guthrie’s outgoing CEO said: “Palm oil has been demonized for the longest time. Now it can play a role in renewable energy.”

Could China Soon Lead in AI Talent?

Tsinghua University has long been known as China’s leading institution for science and engineering. This year, it reached a new milestone: according to an analysis by Saritha Rai for Bloomberg, it now produces more AI patents than Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford combined.

For context: AI patents are a sign of who is inventing new technologies and who is leading the next wave of breakthroughs. Tsinghua’s surge shows how quickly China is trying to position itself as a global AI leader.

Students at Tsinghua helped launch some of China’s most successful AI startups - including DeepSeek, the company that shocked the industry with its powerful language model earlier this year.

Here’s a look at the stats:

• Tsinghua filed 900+ patents last year alone - more than Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton combined.

• American universities produce the most impact, but China is catching up: its share of the world’s top AI researchers jumped from 10% to 26% in the last 3 years.

• China has been teaching AI and coding from early schooling, giving them a massive talent pipeline. In 2020, it graduated 3.57M STEM students, compared with only 820k in the US.

The government has also made AI a national priority - backing students, researchers, and founders with computing access and funding, while AI competitions are happening across every discipline. Some top Chinese scientists who worked in the US are now returning to teach and build labs at Tsinghua.

“Most of my classmates will stay in China,” one PhD student said. “Tsinghua feels more vibrant than ever.”

Is Dubai Right to Silence Noisy Cars?

Ever been jolted awake by a revved-up engine, a blasting speaker, or someone leaning too hard on the horn? Dubai says it’s had enough.

Dubai is rolling out new noise radars across the city, cracking down on cars with roaring exhausts, booming speakers, and nonstop honking. Drivers who break the noise limit can face $540 fines and up to $2,720 in release fees.

The goal: to make Dubai one of the quietest and most orderly cities in the world. Police say the smart systems have already caught plenty of disruptive vehicles.

While plenty of residents are thrilled about quieter nights, some drivers say the new radars feel like over-policing and take the fun out of driving. What do you think?