SoftBank Acquires Sharp Factory to Establish OpenAI Collaboration Hub in Japan

SoftBank is converting Sharp's former LCD panel factory into an AI data center that operates 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents' in collaboration with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei).

SoftBank is expected to sign a contract around the 14th to acquire part of the facilities and land of the factory located in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, from Sharp for about 100 billion yen (approximately 981.9 billion KRW).

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The AI data center is scheduled to begin construction within this year and aims to start operations in 2026. The power capacity is expected to be about 150 MW (megawatts), the largest scale in Japan, with plans to increase it to 250 MW by 2028.

Last month, SoftBank Group and OpenAI established a joint venture called 'SB OpenAI Japan' in Japan to develop and sell enterprise generative AI. The two companies plan to commercialize OpenAI's AI agent model for the first time in the world in Japan and provide customized AI agents by training models based on customer data. Nikkei evaluated that, amid the growing importance of data sovereignty recently, SoftBank's establishment of an AI agent operation base within Japan is highly significant.

Nikkei estimated that about 100,000 GPUs will be required to operate this data center, and the investment amount is expected to reach 1 trillion yen (approximately 9.8189 trillion KRW) based on simple calculations. In addition to NVIDIA, SoftBank is considering procuring GPUs through the U.S. 'Stargate Project.'

SoftBank also plans to develop and operate its own AI models at the data center. SoftBank intends to build AI data centers in major cities across Japan, and this data center will be the third following the currently operating Tokyo data center and the data center under construction in Hokkaido. A candidate site is also being selected in Kyushu, and a network will be established centered on four bases nationwide.