Softbank, Nvidia To Build World's First AI Grid In Japan

“The world has nothing like this,” said Huang about Softbank's planned AI grid.“Japan will be the world's first.”

“Every other telco will have to follow this new wave,” said Son.“...this intelligence network... becomes one big neural brain... For the infrastructure of intelligence for Japan.”

To be sure, the scale of the project is unprecedented.“Together,” said Huang,“we're going to build Japan's largest AI factory... When it's built, it will have 25 AI exaflops. Just remember, the largest supercomputer in the world just recently was 1 exaflop... to produce the AI.” (An exaflop is one quintillion floating-point operations per second.)

This, he continued,“will be distributed across Softbank's 200,000 sites [mobile telecom base stations] here in Japan, serve 55 million customers... We're also going to put on top of it a new type of store, an AI store so that the AIs that were created by Softbank and the AIs created by third parties could be provided to the 55 million customers.”

Huang also sees great potential in the combination of AI and robotics.“The era of physical AI is here,” he told the audience.“I can't imagine a better country to lead the AI robotics revolution than Japan. And the reason for that is, as you know, this country loves robots... In fact, here in Japan, 50% of the world's manufacturing robots are built.”

“I hope that Japan will take advantage of the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence,” he continued,“and combine that with your expertise in mechatronics. No country in the world has greater skills in mechatronics than Japan. This is an extraordinary opportunity that you must seize...,” the Nvidia chief said.

While talking with Softbank's Son, Huang noted,“...artificial intelligence is very different than software. Artificial intelligence requires that you have data, that you have domain expertise.” And in robotics, Japan has world-leading domain expertise.

Nvidia supplies leading Japanese industrial robotics companies Fanuc, Yaskawa, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Electric. It also supplies Rapyuta, a relatively new company established by two Indian graduates of the Tokyo Institute of Technology that specializes in multi-robot coordination and control for warehouse automation.

Nvidia provides its high-tech wares to a wide range of Japanese industries spanning automotive, telecoms, internet service, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, advertising and convenience stores, among many others.

Its customers are among Japan's most prominent corporate players, including Honda, Sony, Hitachi, Denso, NTT, KDDI, Rakuten, Dentsu and Lawson.

It also works closely with Japan's academia and government, including the Institute of Science Tokyo, the University of Tokyo, Japan's national scientific research institute Riken, Nagoya University, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and the ministries of communications, education, and economy, trade and industry.

These lists show what Huang meant when he said,“...we're here to partner with the Japan ecosystem.”

Nvidia, which was saved from bankruptcy in 1996 by an investment from computer game developer SEGA, has been in Japan for decades.

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In addition to SEGA Arcades, its GPUs were adopted for use in the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. The Tokyo Institute of Technology was the first to build a supercomputer using CUDA.

AI agents for one and all

Looking ahead, Huang asked Son what he finds most exciting about Japan's AI future.

Son replied that he is passionate about AI robotics, medical solutions and AI“agents” that can improve the Japanese lifestyle, both enterprise AI agents and personal AI agents. He believes that“...each of us should have our own personal agents.”

Huang then asked,“Could you imagine an AI agent that knows you your whole life?” to which Son replied that each one of us will one day have our own personal agent from the age of one that grows up with us, knows everything about us – a personal digital twin; a surrogate parent that knows when you are sick; a tutor that remembers everything it ever taught you.

To be sure, Huang and Son are not in the business of warning about the dangers of AI. However, they do see the need for each country to develop its own AI from its own citizens' data, which belongs to each nation like a natural resource.

“It makes no sense to outsource that to somebody else,” said Huang. Every country, every company, will produce its own intelligence, its own AI.

“How is it possible that a company does not create its own AI?” asked Huang. That, said Son, would be like“giving your brain away to someone else.”

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