The co-founder of Phison, Malaysia-born K.S Pua has revealed a new venture called Malaysia AI Storage (MaiStorage) that will be based in Selangor. The announcement was one of the major highlights of the first day of the KL20 Summit.
MaiStorage establishment includes technology transfer from Phison
While Pua has repeatedly called MaiStorage as a startup, the new venture has a rather strong backing from the Taiwan-based Phison. For one, the inventor of the USB flash drive said that Phison will be providing its technology know-how worth over RM1 billion to MaiStorage.
Interestingly enough, the technology transfer will be done through a partnership with MIMOS. Among areas covered by the technology transfer include data centre storage, electric vehicle storage, and generative AI storage.
All in all, the big aim of MaiStorage is to help Malaysia transition into the generative AI era according to Pua.
MaiStorage will be based in Selangor
Complete with a starting capital of RM100 million, MaiStorage will be based at the upcoming Malaysia Semiconductor Accelerator & IC Design Park: Selangor Hub in Puchong. The IC Design Park portion is expected to be opened for business by this July although Pua didn’t reveal whether MaiStorage will also be operational at the same time.
Instead of taking engineers from the open market, the company will mainly take undergraduate and graduate students to train. Pua is confident that they can be turned into storage experts in just 18 months given Phison’s vast knowledge in integrated circuit (IC) and storage technology.
He is also quite confident that they can design IC independently right here in Malaysia once they complete the training. He added that around 300 to 500 spots are expected to be available at MaiStorage.
Pua has also revealed that the new company will be paying each undergraduate designer more than RM6,000 per month. On the other hand, graduate-level designer will receive much a higher monthly salary of RM8,000.
