The Japanese telecommunications giant, SoftBank, is planning to invest 150 billion yen ($960 million) to improve its computing capabilities, aiming to develop its own generative artificial intelligence.
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The company intends to develop a generative AI specific to the Japanese language with excellent performance, acquiring graphics processing units (GPUs) from the North American chipmaker Nvidia.
According to a report by Nikkei, the GPUs will be used not only for the company's own generative AI development, but also loaned to other companies. Last year, the SoftBank invested 20 billion yen in building computing infrastructure.
The largest investment ever made in Japan
The additional investment of 150 billion yen will be spent this year and next. The investment in computing infrastructure is considered the largest ever made by any Japanese company.
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The telecommunications company expects to complete development of a model with 390 billion parameters in fiscal 2024 and begin developing a high-performance model with 1 trillion parameters as early as next year. The 1 trillion parameter model is considered a de facto benchmark for world-class performance.
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According to the latest forecasts from Statista, a German research specialist, the Japanese generative AI market is expected to grow to around $13 billion by 2030, which would be 17 times larger than in 2023.
Currently, US technology companies such as Open AI, are ahead in terms of performance and investment. Japanese companies, including NTT and NEC, entered the market, but the number of parameters in their models varia from several billions to tens of billions.
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stocks up
The financial market is responding to the initiative of SoftBank to create your own AI. In late March, the company's share price reached 2.064 yen, the highest since its listing in 2018. Investors are betting that generative AI will be beneficial to business.
Countries around the world consider domestically generated AI important for economic security. The Japanese government and corporations are beginning to focus on “data sovereignty,” that is, the ability to manage data within their own borders. Relying on technology from other countries could slow the response to unexpected events, such as sudden changes in specifications.
OpenAI opens office in Tokyo and makes offers for business in Japan
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In addition to creating your own home AI, SoftBank is building the data centers needed to offer new services. According to Nikkei, the company plans to spread these facilities throughout Japan and recently decided to invest 65 billion yen to build one of the largest AI data centers in the country, on the northern island of Hokkaido.
