According to Nikkei Asia, SoftBank Group Corp., a telecommunications company, plans to transform a former Sharp LCD panel factory in Japan into a data center to run an artificial intelligence (AI) agent jointly developed with OpenAI. SoftBank will sign a contract as soon as Friday to acquire the facilities and part of the land of a discontinued Sharp LCD TV factory in Sakai City, Osaka. The acquisition price is expected to be about 100 billion yen (approximately 4.9 billion yuan). SoftBank believes that the site can provide stable power supply for a long time and is suitable for operating an AI data center.
Construction of the data center will begin in fiscal 2025, with the goal of starting operations in 2026. The maximum power supply during initial operations is expected to be approximately 150 megawatts, making it one of the facilities with the largest power supply in Japan. By fiscal 2028, the power supply here will increase to 250 megawatts.
SoftBank plans to be the first to commercialize OpenAI’s AI agent base model in Japan. OpenAI will introduce the graphics processing unit (GPU) required to develop the AI model and build the model at its factory in Sakai City. These GPUs will likely be sourced from Nvidia and Stargate. Stargate is a venture recently established by SoftBank Group and other companies to develop AI infrastructure in the United States.
The joint venture between SoftBank, its parent company SoftBank Group, and OpenAI will use client companies’ human resources, marketing and other information to train models and sell AI agents customized for each client.
AI agents are programs that can autonomously make decisions and perform necessary tasks based on parameters set by the user. As an advanced form of AI chatbot, AI agents have huge potential, triggering companies such as Google to race to develop them.