Softbank is marching forward in his ambitions to build a major operation of him on his Japan house market, with his own steam and strategic partnership with others like Openai. On Friday, the technology company confirmed that it would pay $ 676 million for the factory previously used by Sharp to build LCD panels to turn it into an artificial intelligence center.
Sharp softbank purchase and sale agreement includes land and buildings of Sharp Sakai factory in Osaka, for a price of 100 billion Jen ($ 676 million).
This was an indispensable early step for softbank as the data centers are a listed in the massive wave of the generation that includes the technology world: the considerable capacity of the data center is needed to train models and provide and run subsequent services.
When asked if the site is part of its plans to commercialize the Openai models in Japan, a softbank spokesman showed Techcrunch in its previous announcement regarding a collaboration with Openai to establish an advanced enterprise called “Cristal Intelligence” in Japan. Contacted for a response, Openai refused to comment on the news.
Openai is said to intend to bring his basic models of him to the Japanese market, using GPU to develop models at the Sakai plant. SB Openai Japan, a joint enterprise between Softbank and Openai, will train models using customer data from marketing and other activities. JV will then sell personalized agents of him to clients for a report by Nikkei.
The data center plan underlines how softbank and Openai are expanding the field of their cooperation.
Both technology companies discovered their joint enterprise in Japan after OpenAi collaborations with Softbank, Oracle and other companies to build several data centers in the Japanese giant Japanese Telco is also investing in Openai. The talks have been going on for months, and the latest is that softbank is reported to be investing up to $ 25 billion in Openai in a rating of about $ 300 billion. However, that funds should not be closed, nor officially announced.
Buying the softbank plant comes approximately 10 months after signing an mm to build a large data center it in a sharp plant previously used for the production of the LCD panel.
Softbank aims to start operations in 2026. Softbank expects the LCD panel plant to have enough power capacity to operate the data center, initially in about 150 megawatts and eventually increased to over 240 megawatts.
Sakai facility will be the third softbank data center. Now she operating a database in Tokyo and another is being built in Hokkaido.
