Infrastructure · 28 October 2026
From Mars to Malaysia: The Business of Building Global Assets
Future Literacy Group expands into Southeast Asia through ASEAN Venture, with a pipeline exceeding MYR 2 billion in infrastructure opportunities in Malaysia awaiting assessment for bankability, industrial partners and investors.
María Luque Fernández, Founder & CEO, Future Literacy Group
Future Literacy Group (FLG), the international company founded by María Luque Fernández, is expanding into Southeast Asia through ASEAN Venture, with an initial pipeline of infrastructure opportunities exceeding MYR 2 billion in Malaysia alone. The company is developing projects and partnerships across technology, industry and infrastructure, with a focus on turning strategic opportunities into commercially viable assets.
The expansion brings Luque’s work from international technology initiatives into the practical questions of industrial investment: what should be built, where, with which partners, and under what conditions can it attract capital and deliver lasting economic value?
Her career has included work on one of the more ambitious infrastructure challenges imaginable: connecting the Moon, Mars and other parts of the Solar System. Through the InterPlanetary Networking Special Interest Group, Luque worked with an international community that included Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the internet, helping bring institutions and industrial partners together around shared protocols, strategic planning and technology pilots.
The challenge was never just whether the technology could work. It was what had to be built and coordinated to make it real.
Today, her conversations increasingly turn to Southeast Asia. The infrastructure is more terrestrial, but the underlying question remains familiar: how do you turn a promising idea into an asset that can actually be built, financed and used?
Beyond the technology
Luque is the founder of Future Literacy Group (FLG), an international company working across Europe and North America and expanding into Southeast Asia through ASEAN Venture.
Its work spans AI, quantum communications, space connectivity, cybersecurity, dual-use technologies and strategic infrastructure. Her focus is less on technology as an isolated product than on the capabilities it can create.
Her experience includes European quantum communications initiatives and work supporting Spain’s defence-technology ecosystem. In the United States, she supported a European critical-technology company pursuing industrial expansion. The company subsequently closed a US$8 million financing round and signed a strategic partnership with a US industrial group.
“Strategy only matters if it changes what can happen next,” she says. “A technology has to find an application, a company has to find a market, and a project has to become something that can be financed and delivered.”
FLG is now scaling its international activity through ASEAN Venture, with a growth ambition of 50% as it expands its pipeline, partnerships and operational presence across Southeast Asia.
Why Southeast Asia?
For Luque, ASEAN’s significance lies in the infrastructure connecting its manufacturing, maritime trade, energy and technology supply chains. Malaysia offers a particularly relevant setting, with established industrial capabilities and ambitions across semiconductors, digital infrastructure and energy.
The scale of that ambition was highlighted when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son had discussed potential investments of US$50 billion in AI, emerging technologies and data centres in Malaysia. This remains a figure communicated by the Prime Minister, not a formally announced investment commitment by SoftBank.
Other initiatives offer more concrete examples. The European Investment Bank has announced a US$250 million loan to Dutch semiconductor company NXP to expand its Malaysian operations, while the EU has supported feasibility studies for Lumut Maritime Industrial City in Perak, developed with Port of Antwerp-Bruges International and the Perak State Development Corporation.
Together, these projects illustrate why industrial investment depends on the surrounding ecosystem. This is also the context for FLG’s developing pipeline of more than MYR 2 billion in potential infrastructure opportunities in Malaysia—not secured investment, but opportunities under development. The aim is to connect European industrial and technological capabilities with Malaysian priorities while enabling collaboration across Southeast Asia.
“We are initiating dialogues with regional authorities to develop real asset cases with economic potential—projects that create jobs, develop local talent and R&D, and connect with the country’s major infrastructure developments,” Luque says. “It is important to be aligned with the region’s wider development priorities, beyond our initial client, whether that client is a landowner or an industrial company identifying a business opportunity in a particular territory. The strongest projects are those where commercial viability and regional development reinforce one another.”
Before looking for investors
Consider a hypothetical example. A landowner in Malaysia approaches Future Literacy with access to power, an understanding with Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), and ambitions to build a data centre. He wants institutional investors and technology partners.
But Luque’s first question is not who might finance it.
“Where is the land? What industries are nearby? How much power is actually committed, and who will buy the computing capacity? Does the project fit into an existing industrial or technology ecosystem, or would it be an isolated facility with no clear source of demand?
“Perhaps the site is better suited to solar generation. Perhaps it makes more sense to connect the project to a nearby industrial park. Or perhaps the right location is somewhere else entirely.”
The distinction is between having the ingredients of a project and having a viable project.
The same applies to logistics corridors. Connecting two points does not automatically create an economic asset: the corridor needs industrial activity, suppliers, services and actual demand.
“Our work is to build that logic from the ground up: to understand what should be built, where it should be built, what it should enable, and how the different pieces fit together. Only then can we bring in the right industrial partners and structure a credible route to financing and execution.
“Sometimes the answer is to develop the original idea. Sometimes it is to redesign it. And sometimes it is to build something entirely different. The objective is not to make every project happen. It is to identify what is actually worth building—and make it possible.”
From strategic value to bankability
A project can make sense for a country and still struggle to attract capital. Its benefits may be distributed across industries or borders, while the costs and risks fall on a narrower group of participants.
Bankability is therefore central. Does the project have credible demand, a workable commercial model, realistic assumptions and an acceptable allocation of risk? Are the necessary partners in place? Can regulatory, construction and operational risks be managed?
The ASEAN Power Grid illustrates the scale of the challenge. The International Energy Agency estimates that expanding and modernising the region’s electricity grids will require more than US$300 billion between 2025 and 2040, including around US$27 billion for cross-border interconnectors. Delivering this infrastructure will require viable projects, coordination between countries and financing structures that can mobilise private capital.
FLG is following the ASEAN Power Grid closely, including developments in common financing mechanisms. As these evolve, the firm will work with clients to adapt their projects’ bankability to the requirements of emerging infrastructure and financing frameworks, and to identify how individual investments can contribute to wider regional priorities.
Luque’s work also examines what an investment delivers beyond financial returns. FLG’s proprietary Resilience Pyramid has informed the development of distinct, country-specific and sector-specific frameworks for evaluating complex investments, including security and dual-use opportunities. Developed through a consensus process involving 41 organisations, the Resilience Pyramid assesses six dimensions of value across four levels, identifying 38 types of value.
“We need better ways to assess what an investment leaves behind,” she says. “Financial return remains essential. But we should also understand whether a project strengthens critical infrastructure, develops knowledge, reinforces supply chains, creates credible alternatives to critical dependencies or improves a country’s capacity to act and make decisions. These factors matter when evaluating investments whose consequences extend well beyond a single asset.”
Building the route to execution
Through ASEAN Venture, FLG is developing an operational platform connecting European industrial and emerging-technology companies with opportunities across Southeast Asia, while supporting collaboration within the region itself.
The work goes beyond introductions: it means identifying needs, assessing opportunities, assembling industrial partners and structuring credible routes to investment and execution.
For European companies, the region offers opportunities to participate in expanding industrial and infrastructure ecosystems. For Malaysian and other Southeast Asian stakeholders, international partnerships can bring technology, expertise and supply-chain capabilities.
From connecting networks across the Solar System to developing infrastructure in Southeast Asia, Luque’s focus remains the same: turning promising ideas into commercially viable assets that deliver lasting economic and strategic value.