KUALA LUMPUR, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Over 38 percent of Malaysian businesses now consistently use at least one artificial intelligence (AI) tool, up from 27 percent in 2025, according to a survey by Amazon Web Services (AWS) released on Wednesday.
One million additional businesses adopted AI over the past year, almost two every minute, bringing the total to more than 3.4 million, AWS said in its report Unlocking Malaysia's AI Potential 2026.
"Yet scale has not kept pace: 67 percent of adopters remain focused on basic applications like public chatbots for routine tasks or ready-made tools to streamline existing processes, while just 19 percent of businesses have a formal strategy for scaling AI across multiple functions," it said.
Most businesses will not build every AI capability in-house, with more than 57 percent primarily sourcing AI capabilities through external providers, consultants, or software vendors. In comparison, 69 percent say locally based software providers and AI solution developers are important to their adoption, it said.
"Providers with deep sector knowledge can build AI into familiar workflows and make that capability available to many organizations, helping expertise travel further across the economy," it said.
Meanwhile, in financial services, the AWS report stated that 64 percent of businesses have moved beyond experimentation and 42 percent have a scaling strategy.
The sector also leads on governance: 39 percent have a formal AI governance framework, compared with 24 percent across all businesses. The industry operates within one of the most highly regulated environments in Malaysia, yet it has progressed further than most industries in embedding AI across business operations.
"This suggests that governance investment accelerates rather than impedes AI maturity. It provides a benchmark for other sectors; businesses looking to move beyond pilots should consider resourcing governance through dedicated teams, tooling, and executive sponsorship," the report said. ■