Softbank buys a 676 million dollar drinker for Openai Collab in Japan in Japan

Softbank is moving forward on its ambitions to build the main Amnesty International operation in its local market in Japan, on its vapor and in a strategic partnership with others such as Openai. on FridayThe Technology Company confirmed that it will pay $ 676 million for the previously used factory by Sharp to create LCD panels to convert it to the artificial intelligence data center.

The SoftBank purchase and sale agreement with Sharp includes both lands and buildings for the Sakai Sharp factory in Osaka, at a price of 100 billion yen ($ 676 million).

This was an early early step for Softbank since the database is Lynchpin in the huge wave of gym, sweeping the world of technology: a large data center capacity is needed to train models and provide and operate subsequent services.

When asked if the site was part of its plans to market Openai models in Japan, a Softbank spokesman pointed to Techcrunch Its previous announcement Regarding cooperation with Openai to publish an advanced institution called “Cristal Intelligence” in Japan. He was contacted to respond, and Openai refused to comment on the news.

Openai It is said It intends to bring its founding models of Amnesty International to the Japanese market, and to take advantage of graphics processing units to develop models at the Sakai Factory. SB Openai Japan, a joint project between SoftBank and Openai, will train models using customer data from marketing and other activities. JV will then sell artificial intelligence agents allocated to customers, According to a report issued by Nikki.

The Data Center plan emphasizes the extent of the expansion of the SoftBank and Openai range of their cooperation.

The two technological companies revealed Their joint project in Japan the next Openai with SoftBank, Oracle and other companies To build many artificial intelligence data centers in the United States, it invests the Japanese communications giant in Openai. The conversations have been going on for months, and the latest is that Softbank It is said Investing up to $ 25 billion in Openai, with an evaluation of about $ 300 billion. However, this collection of donations has not yet been closed, and it is not officially announced.

Softbank’s purchase of the factory comes after about 10 months Signing the Memorandum of Understanding to build a large data center for Amnesty International In a sharp factory was used in advance to produce the LCD panel.

Softbank aims to start operations in 2026. Softbank expects that the LCD panel factory expects enough power capacity to operate the artificial intelligence data center, initially at about 150 MW and eventually increases to more than 240 MW.

The SAKAI facility will be the third data center in SoftBank. It is already working on a data center in Tokyo And another is built Hokkaido.