A SoftBank Corp. store sign in Tokyo's Ginza district on Wednesday, November 1, 2023.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
According to a report in the Nikkei Shimbun, Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank aims to develop a “world-class” Japanese language-specific generative artificial intelligence model, and aims to develop 90 million yen over the next two years to beef up its computing equipment. The company plans to invest $60 million.
Training large-scale language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's Chat GPT requires advanced graphics processing equipment, and SoftBank plans to purchase this equipment from US semiconductor giant Nvidia, anonymously reported by the Nikkei Shimbun. It was reported on Monday, citing sources.
The 150 billion yen ($960 million) investment will be spent in 2024 and 2025 and is in addition to the 20 billion yen SoftBank spent on computing infrastructure last year, according to the report.
The investment is believed to be the largest of its kind by a Japanese company and, when completed, will likely give SoftBank the most powerful computing power in the country, the Nikkei added.
Another Nikkei Asia report said that despite growing interest in LLM technology, Japan lacks private companies with the high-performance supercomputers needed to build LLMs.
SoftBank's reported investment could change this and give Japan a strong domestic player in the generative AI space at a time when international players are looking to enter the market.
Just last week, OpenAI opened its first office in Tokyo as part of its global expansion plans. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced that it will invest $2.9 billion over two years to increase cloud computing and AI infrastructure in the country.
SoftBank plans to complete the first model in fiscal 2024, which has 390 billion parameters, demonstrating the complexity of LLM. According to the Nikkei Shimbun, the company plans to begin developing a higher-performance model with 1 trillion parameters as early as 2025.
Other local companies, such as Japanese telecommunications company NTT, have also announced plans to develop LLMs this year. NTT announced that it will invest 8 trillion yen ($51.7 billion) in growth areas such as data centers and AI over the next five years.
According to data from Statista Market Insights, Japan's AI market is expected to grow to approximately $13 billion by 2030, approximately 17 times more than in 2023.
SoftBank stock has been on a positive trend as the company shifts its focus to AI, rising about 20% since the beginning of the year. The company is also a majority shareholder in Arm, a semiconductor company whose sales expectations are rising amid the AI boom.
SoftBank is working on building AI data centers across the country, and recently reportedly participated in a project to build a 65 billion yen center in Hokkaido.
Read the full Nikkei Asia report.
