Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) unveils a JPY 72.5 billion (US$480 million) subsidy to back Generative AI (GenAI) development by five local firms, including telecom leader KDDI.
This move signals KDDI's debut in the supercomputer realm, strengthening its foothold in AI development. Reports from NHK, Nikkei, and Reuters highlight the challenges Japanese firms face in developing GenAI due to limited resources and equipment.
Cloud computing resource: a national economic security issue
They predominantly rely on cloud services from American providers like Amazon AWS and Microsoft. Domestic institutions like the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) can only provide limited support, as these reports indicate.
Thus, MITI views this as an economic security issue. Under the Economic Security Promotion Act, the Japanese government can designate specific important items for economic security, including cloud programs.
Through this initiative, MITI will provide subsidies to KDDI, Sakura Internet, GMO Internet Group, Rutilea, and Highreso, to procure the necessary equipment for GenAI development. The subsidies of these companies amount to JPY 10.24 billion, JPY 50.1 billion, JPY 1.93 billion, JPY 2.56 billion, and JPY 7.7 billion, respectively.
Among these companies, large enterprises will receive subsidies covering one-third of the equipment procurement costs, while others will receive subsidies covering half. Recipients of the subsidies must offer cloud computing services for at least three years.
The cost of procuring supercomputers for AI development ranges from several billion to several hundred billion yen. KDDI plans to use the subsidy to purchase Nvidia's H100 GPU and other equipment to create cloud-based AI development computing resources for AI developers and researchers.
KDDI is expected to invest around JPY 100 billion in this service. GMO Internet Group intends to offer GPU cloud services for GenAI development based on 800 Nvidia H200 GPUs.
While American companies are expanding cloud computing capabilities provided by AI supercomputers independently, the Japanese government is attempting to accelerate the expansion of AI development resources through official subsidies.
Article translated by Jerry Chen
