SoftBank to Launch AI Data Center GPU Cloud in Japan by October 2026
May 27, 2026
SoftBank to Launch AI Data Center GPU Cloud in Japan by October 2026
SoftBank Corp. has announced plans to launch an AI Data Center GPU Cloud service as part of its neocloud business in October 2026, marking a significant step in Japan’s push to build sovereign AI infrastructure. The initiative aims to provide domestic enterprises with integrated AI computing power and software that can be securely operated within the country, addressing growing concerns over data sovereignty and latency in AI workloads.
The service will leverage advanced GPU-accelerated AI computing infrastructure, including NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 systems deployed in SoftBank’s Japan-based data centers. According to a press release from the company, this setup will enable customers to execute a wide range of AI workloads—from model training and inference to data processing—while ensuring secure data management and operations remain within Japan’s borders. Ahead of the commercial launch, SoftBank has already begun offering a beta version of the service and has started using it internally across its group companies.
The “AI Data Center GPU Cloud” is built on a combination of SoftBank’s AI computing infrastructure and the “Infrinia AI Cloud OS,” an AI data center software stack that provides Kubernetes as a Service (KaaS) for multi-tenant environments and Inference as a Service (Inf-aaS) for Large Language Model inference via APIs. The platform also offers centralized and automated management of GPU resources, Kubernetes-based operations, and optimized AI workload execution, which the company says will reduce the effort required to set up development environments and manage compute resources, thereby lowering operational burdens and costs.
Junichi Miyakawa, President and CEO of SoftBank Corp., emphasized the strategic importance of the initiative. “As AI becomes more deeply integrated into society, the source of competitiveness is expanding beyond AI itself to include the computing power and operational software that support it,” he said. “Under our new growth strategy, ‘Activate AI for Society,’ SoftBank will provide integrated computing infrastructure and software that can be securely used within Japan as a neocloud provider. ‘Infrinia AI Cloud OS’ and ‘AI Data Center GPU Cloud’ will serve as core services in this initiative, strongly supporting customers’ AI development and real-world deployment.”
Charlie Boyle, Vice President of DGX systems at NVIDIA, also commented on the partnership. “The transformation of telecommunications into an AI-native architecture requires a new foundation of AI infrastructure capable of handling the most complex sovereign AI workloads,” he said. “SoftBank’s deployment of the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 and ‘Infrinia AI Cloud OS’ gives Japanese enterprises a high-performance, secure, and scalable platform to accelerate their industries.”
Looking ahead, SoftBank plans to integrate the “AI Data Center GPU Cloud” with its AI-RAN technology as part of its broader “Telco AI Cloud” initiative, which aims to build next-generation social infrastructure for the AI era. By combining these capabilities, the company intends to optimize AI processing from training to inference while building a sovereign, distributed AI infrastructure that delivers low latency and high reliability across Japan.
Source: w.media
