NVIDIA will play a central role in developing Japan’s generative AI infrastructure, as the country seeks to capitalize on the technology’s economic potential, and further develop its workforce.
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The announcement from NVIDIA comes after Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on the future of AI with NVIDIA in the country. NVIDIA is collaborating with key digital infrastructure providers, including GMO Internet Group, Highreso, KDDI Corporation, RUTILEA, SAKURA internet Inc. and SoftBank Corp., which the ministry has certified to spearhead the development of cloud infrastructure crucial for AI applications.
The ministry announced plans to provide $740 million in funding to help 6 local firms in this new AI initiative, which means Japan is the latest nation to embrace the concept of sovereign AI by fortifying Japanese startups, enterprises, and research with advanced AI technologies.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang visited Japan last year, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, to discuss the future of AI. During the trip, Jensen talked about “AI factories” that would be next-generation data centers designed to work through the most computationally intensive AI tasks, are crucial for turning vast amounts of data into intelligence.
At the time, Jensen said: “The AI factory will become the bedrock of modern economies across the world“.
The Japanese government will subsidize a large portion of the costs towards building AI supercomputers, helping AI adoption across the nation, enhancing workforce skills, supporting Japanese language model development, and helping fight natural disasters.