"Seize AI Leadership"... Japanese Government Provides 370 Billion Won Support to SoftBank

One-Third Support for AI Supercomputer Development Costs
Support Plans Announced Last Month for Five Related Companies

The Japanese government has decided to contribute up to 42.1 billion yen (3.7 trillion won) for SoftBank's maintenance of a supercomputer dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) development. This reflects a collaboration between the public and private sectors to gain leadership in AI.

The Nikkei newspaper reported on the 10th that Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced it will support up to one-third of the costs for improving the supercomputer environment for SoftBank. The goal is to develop a supercomputer that serves as the foundation for data learning and to strengthen Japan's AI competitiveness.

SoftBank plans to use the supercomputer for its own generative AI development while also making it available to external AI developers through cloud services. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Saito Gen stated, "Maintaining the resources necessary for generative AI model development is extremely important from the perspectives of economic security and strengthening industrial competitiveness."

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Earlier, on the 19th of last month, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry decided to provide subsidies to five companies including KDDI, GMO Internet Group, Sakura Internet, Lutilia, and HighReso for the development of AI supercomputers. The support covers about one-third to half of the costs for maintaining supercomputers per company. The subsidies per company range from 1.9 billion to 50.1 billion yen (170 billion to 447 billion won).

The Nikkei newspaper pointed out that the Japanese government's support for private companies' supercomputer development is based on the judgment that AI is important from the perspective of economic security. AI and generative AI development require high-performance computers for massive data learning, but domestic computational capacity in Japan is still weak.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.