LEMON BLOG

February always feels like the "real" start of the year. January is the warm-up lap where we pretend we're organised, and February is when reality shows up like "Alright, show me the plan.". If you're in Malaysia, February 2026 arrives with a pretty iconic vibe: a month that starts with a rare double public holiday in parts of the country, rolls into major cultural celebrations, and also drops a few global, tech-leaning moments worth paying attention to. Let's walk through the big stuff happening in February 2026, with a Malaysia-first lens and a global sprinkle where it makes sense.

A new report says the Chinese government has given DeepSeek conditional approval to buy NVIDIA's H200 AI chips, with the details of those conditions still being finalised. The same reporting also says three other major buyers in China have been cleared under similar terms: ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent. Collectively, they were said to be approved for more than 400,000 H200 units.

Spotify is widening the rollout of a feature it calls Prompted Playlists, moving it beyond its earlier limited trial in New Zealand and bringing it to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada. If you're on the free tier, this one isn't aimed at you (at least for now).

Malaysia's "digital talent gap" isn't a new topic, but it's one of those problems that keeps showing up everywhere once you look closely. Companies want people who can build and secure cloud systems, automate deployments, work with data, and now increasingly, understand AI workflows too. At the same time, plenty of Malaysians are still trying to find a solid way into tech without spending a fortune on courses that may or may not lead to a job.

Microsoft is doubling down on its investment in Malaysia's digital future. Following the launch of the Malaysia West Cloud Region earlier this year in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area, the company has now announced its next major expansion: the Southeast Asia 3 Cloud Region, set to open in Johor Bahru.