Sabah's AI and Tech Landscape in 2026: Where Things Stand

I get asked a version of this question almost every week here in Sabah. Is there really a tech scene over here, or is everything still happening in Kuala Lumpur? It is a fair thing to ask. For a long time the honest answer was that Sabah sat on the quiet side of Malaysia's tech story. But if you have been paying attention over the last couple of years, you can feel something shifting. So let me give you a grounded picture of where things actually stand in 2026, without the hype and without talking the place down.

The honest starting point

Let us be straight with each other. Sabah has historically had very few local startup incubators, accelerators, or sources of venture funding. If you were a founder here, the usual path was to fly to the peninsula to find support, mentors, and money, or to simply build quietly on your own with whatever you had. That is just the reality many of us grew up with, and pretending otherwise does nobody any favours.

But here is the more interesting part. That picture is changing, and it is changing because the state has openly decided it wants to change. The Sabah government has signalled real ambition to grow Sabah into a regional tech and innovation hub, with economic diversification through technology treated as a genuine priority. That intent got sharper after the pandemic, when a lot of us learned the hard way that depending on a narrow set of industries leaves you exposed.

The support that is finally showing up

Ambition on its own is cheap. What matters is whether anything concrete follows it. The encouraging news is that a few real things have landed on the ground in Sabah, and they are worth knowing about if you run a business or are thinking of starting one.

• SCENIC, the Sabah Creative Economy and Innovation Centre, is a Sabah State Government initiative that was approved by the Sabah Cabinet back in August 2019. It sits under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Sabah (KSTI), and its whole reason for existing is to accelerate Sabah industries through technology, innovation, and creativity. In plain terms, it is a state-backed home for this kind of work, which we simply did not have before.
• Cradle, the Malaysian government startup agency, has been active in Sabah since 2022. It reaches us through national programmes such as MYStartup and the Malaysia Startup Ecosystem Roadmap, also known as SUPER. The effect has been visible: Sabah startup registrations on the national portal have grown notably since Cradle started showing up here.
• The Kinabalu Startup Bootcamp brought these threads together on the ground. It was organised by SCENIC together with MYStartup, supported by Cradle and KSTI, and ran with around 60 participants. Sixty people in a room building and pitching is not a stadium, but it is a real, local signal that the ecosystem is forming.

None of this means Sabah has suddenly turned into Silicon Valley. It has not, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But the gap between intention and action is closing, and for a state that started from a quiet base, that direction of travel is what counts.

The practical pivot most people miss

Here is where I want to be useful rather than just informative. Whenever I talk about incubators, accelerators, and funding, I can see business owners start to switch off, because it sounds like a world that belongs to a small group of startup founders and not to the kedai owner, the clinic, the accountant, or the tour operator. And honestly, the big-hub conversation can feel distant if you just run a normal Sabah business trying to get through the week.

So let me say the thing clearly. You do not have to wait for Sabah to become a tech hub before you benefit from technology. The single fastest win available to ordinary Sabah businesses today is AI adoption, right now, in the work you are already doing. That win does not require funding, a startup, or anyone's permission. It requires a little time and a willingness to learn.

When I sit with local business owners, the gains are almost always in the same few places:

• Productivity. Drafting emails, summarising long documents, cleaning up messy notes, and getting a first version of almost anything in minutes instead of hours.
• Marketing. Writing social captions, product descriptions, and promotion ideas in both English and Malay, so your content keeps flowing even when you are busy running the actual business.
• Customer service. Preparing clear replies to common questions, drafting polite responses to tricky messages, and keeping your tone consistent across your whole team.

These are not futuristic, venture-funded use cases. They are boring, daily, and immediately valuable, which is exactly why they matter. A two-person business in Penampang can pick up these habits this month and feel the difference in their week, long before any big tech hub is finished being built.

The ecosystem will take years to mature. Your own productivity does not have to wait that long. Those are two different timelines, and you control one of them., Edison Chua

Where this leaves us

So, where do things stand in Sabah in 2026? Early, but moving. The state has named technology as a real priority, SCENIC gives that intent a home, Cradle and MYStartup are bringing national programmes to our doorstep, and events like the Kinabalu Startup Bootcamp are putting Sabahans in the room together. The foundations are being laid, even if the building is far from finished.

My encouragement to you is simple. Watch the ecosystem grow, support it where you can, and feel a bit of pride that Sabah is finally building this. But do not sit on your hands waiting for it. Start adopting AI in your own business now, because that is the part you can act on today, with the tools that already exist.

That is exactly why I built NextGen Training Academy here in Sabah, and why I run hands-on AI training for local people, in person, in a way that fits how we actually work. You do not need to be technical, and you do not need to wait for permission from anyone. You just need a practical place to start. If that is what you are looking for, take a look at the workshop below.