Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim opened the summit at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on Monday morning, telling delegates the region “must convert trade routes into value chains that lift wages at home.” He sat next to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, signaling the bloc’s combined market of 680 million consumers.

Delegates signed 42 MOUs during closed-door sessions, according to summit organizer InvestKL. The largest, valued at $12 billion, commits a consortium of Japanese trading houses and Malaysian utility Tenaga Nasional to build 2 gigawatts of solar farms plus a green-hydrogen export terminal in Johor state. Construction starts in January 2027 and finishes by 2030, the companies said.

U.S. chip giant AMD revealed plans to spend $8 billion on a new test-and-assembly plant in Penang that will employ 4,000 engineers. CEO Lisa Su told reporters the site will package AI processors “for every major cloud provider” and will be AMD’s largest facility outside the United States. Malaysia already hosts Intel and Infineon plants; the AMD addition pushes the country’s semiconductor output past $100 billion a year, trade minister Zafrul Aziz said.

European firms chased digital assets. France’s Engie and the Netherlands’ KPN agreed to invest $5 billion in a 150-megawatt data center campus powered entirely by offshore wind. The campus, located in Cyberjaya, will begin operations in 2028 and lease capacity to banks needing local data storage under Malaysian law. Engie CEO Catherine MacGregor said the power purchase agreement “locks in renewable energy at 4 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour for 20 years,” among the lowest tariffs in Asia.

Chinese participation was lower-key yet still substantial. Telecom equipment maker Huawei signed a $3 billion MOU to supply 5G gear to Malaysia’s second national network and to train 10,000 engineers in cyber-security. The deal avoids U.S. export controls because final assembly will occur at Huawei’s new plant in Shah Alam, sixty minutes from the summit venue. Huawei deputy chairman Ken Hu called the arrangement “glocalization in action” and said output will ship to Thailand and the Philippines under ASEAN free-trade rules.

Indian conglomerates chased logistics. Adani Ports pledged $4 billion to expand container capacity at Klang port, already the 12th-busiest box harbor worldwide. The investment doubles the port’s annual throughput to 28 million TEUs by 2032 and creates 8,000 jobs, Adani told stock exchanges. The announcement lifted Adani shares 6 percent on Wednesday and sparked a 2 percent jump in Malaysian port operator MMC.

On the summit sidelines, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met separately with finance ministers from Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines to press for tighter export controls on advanced chips. A Treasury read-out said talks were “constructive,” but attendees told GlobalBeat Washington’s real goal is to slow Chinese access to AI hardware routed through ASEAN free zones. One delegate, speaking on anonymity rules, said Bessent warned that “any transshipment hub faces secondary sanctions.”