Tim Bunnell, a geography professor at the National University of Singapore, said the “Silicon Valley model” for Cyberjaya was intended to be aspirational rather than a realistic goal for replication.

“There were many sites around the world in the 1990s that said they wanted to become the Silicon Valley of that area. Many of these terms were peddled by international consultants who tend to offer cookie-cutter recommendations in multiple contexts,” Bunnell told FMT.

Cyberjaya was launched in 1997 as the nucleus of the Multimedia Super Corridor project and a hub for information technology development, with the hope of transforming the country into a knowledge economy.

Bunnell, who wrote a book analysing the MSC project in 2004, said Cyberjaya was still a far cry from Silicon Valley in the US, which hosts a vast number of leading technology companies including Meta, Google, and Apple.

However, it had come off as “a small but actual tech-centred city, even if its overly ambitious aims from the 1990s have not been fully realised”, with its cultural and linguistic diversity a selling point.

Comparing Cyberjaya, Penang and Johor, Bunnell said it was possible that the three zones could end up specialising in slightly different realms.

He said Cyberjaya’s advantage was its proximity to Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and KLIA; Johor’s special economic zone would benefit from its proximity to Singapore, while Penang had a longer history as a tech centre compared to the other locations.