The movement to develop "domestic" generative AI that automatically creates sentences is becoming active. We will compete with American companies that are leading with abundant financial power with industry- and field-specific development.
The IT company "Sakura Internet" will invest about 130 billion yen in a data center in Ishikari City, Hokkaido, to provide support services to other companies developing generative AI.
Full-scale operations will begin in June next year, and we plan to increase the capacity of the facility tenfold over the next three years.
President Kunihiro Tanaka said, "There are many voices that want to put data in the Japan because of the confidentiality of data in the context of economic security, and I feel the importance of AI provided by domestic operators."
Since a large amount of funds and large-scale data centers are required for development and operation, major American IT companies are taking the lead based on their abundant financial power, and have begun to advance into the Japanese version of generative AI.
On the other hand, NEC, NTT, and SoftBank are also developing domestically produced generative AI, specializing in industries and fields such as finance and healthcare, and are trying to respond with strategies to reduce equipment and costs.