SoftBank Expands Partnership with Nvidia to Become ‘AI Grid of Japan’ 

The tie-up between Japanese multinational investment holding company SoftBank and chipmaker Nvidia has been intensifying. Now, SoftBank will build supercomputers in Japan with the help of Nvidia chips, as per Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. 

Huang was speaking at Nvidia’s AI Summit in Tokyo. The supercomputer will use the Blackwell chips of Nvidia. 

To add to it, the telecommunications arm of SoftBank Group has also tied up with Nvidia to launch a new network. The new launch will comprise a new network that integrates both artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G technology. This process is referred to as an artificial intelligence radio access network (AI-RAN). The pilot for the same has already been completed. Nvidia said that this is "a breakthrough in computing that opens AI revenue streams potentially worth billions of dollars to telecom operators.” 

“With SoftBank’s significant investment in NVIDIA’s full-stack AI, Omniverse, and 5G AI-RAN platforms, Japan is leaping into the AI industrial revolution to become a global leader, driving a new era of growth across the telecommunications, transportation, robotics, and healthcare industries in ways that will greatly benefit humankind in the age of AI,” Haung said as per a company statement. 

SoftBank intends to create an AI marketplace using NVIDIA AI Enterprise software. The intent for the same is to focus on meeting the demand for secure AI computing. This new service will give Softbank a broad position to enhance its presence in Japan and become the “AI grid for Japan." 

“Through our long collaboration with NVIDIA, SoftBank is leading this transformation from the forefront. With our extremely powerful AI infrastructure and our new, distributed AI-RAN solution ‘AITRAS’ that reinvents 5G networks for AI, we will accelerate innovation across the country and throughout the world,” said Junichi Miyakawa, president and CEO of SoftBank, in a statement. 

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AI Grid of Japan

Further, SoftBank will be the first company in the world to get the NVIDIA DGX B200 systems. To simplify, NVIDIA DGX B200 is a unified AI platform that is designed to support businesses at any stage of their AI journey. This system will be the base of its new supercomputer, the DGX SuperPOD. This supercomputer that will be used in universities, businesses, and research centers across Japan will help SoftBank build and improve generative AI and other AI technologies. 

There is no doubt that AI has been penetrating most aspects of life. Softbank, for one, has always been bullish on AI. SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son has said that time and again in several conferences. He has also reportedly said that artificial superintelligence will exist in this world by 2035. What is interesting in the current collaboration is the AI-RAN. 

“This new breed of infrastructure has broad ecosystem support from the telecom industry, as it offers operators the ability to transform their base stations from cost centers into AI revenue-producing assets,” as per Nvidia. It will be interesting to see how this innovation pans out with time.