The site
A 2009 LCD Plant Becomes an AI Data Center
- Purchase: SoftBank Corp. agreed in March 2025 to buy land, buildings and related assets of Sharp's Sakai plant for about ¥100 billion (about $676M): about 450,000 m2 of land and 840,000 m2 of floor space, roughly 60% of the complex. Sharp, owned by Foxconn, ended panel production there in 2024.
- Power: about 150 MW at first, expanding to more than 250 MW. SoftBank's May 2026 plan lists 140 MW for the "AX Factory" AI data center, with 110 exaFLOPS of compute under development.
- Opening: first targeted for 2025, then 2026. A tracker reports the May 2026 plan moved it to fiscal 2027; no opening has been announced.
- Tenant: SB OAI Japan, a 50/50 venture of OpenAI and SoftBank launched November 2025, sells OpenAI's "Crystal intelligence" in Japan. Nikkei linked it to Sakai; SoftBank has not.
What gets reused
The Grid Service Was the Asset
- Power: SoftBank's board approved the deal on condition of securing 250 MW of supply. The plant was built to be self-sufficient, with its own generation, which SoftBank bought with the site.
- Cooling: the panel plant's cooling plant comes with the buildings.
- Batteries: part of the site becomes a "GX Factory" for zinc-halogen battery storage, producing from fiscal 2027, so the campus both makes and uses storage.
- Not disclosed: water rights, cleanroom reuse and floor loading.
See Campus Layer.
KDDI's half
KDDI Converted Its Part First
KDDI bought land, buildings and electrical equipment in another part of the Sharp complex in April 2025 and began operating the Osaka Sakai Data Center on January 22, 2026: four stories and 57,000 m2, Nvidia GB200 NVL72 racks with direct liquid cooling, and 100% renewable power. Users include Google for Gemini, Takeda, Morgenrot and ELYZA. KDDI has not published its megawatts.
Japan's AI sites
Japan Is Pushing New Capacity Toward Hokkaido
| Site | MW | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| KDDI Osaka SakaiSakai, Osaka (former Sharp plant) | Not disclosed | Live January 2026 | GB200 NVL72, direct liquid cooling, 100% renewable power |
| SoftBank TomakomaiTomakomai, Hokkaido | 50 first; 300+ planned | Under construction | Started April 2025; up to half subsidized by METI |
| AWS, Microsoft, OracleTokyo and Osaka regions | Not disclosed | Operating and expanding | AWS about $15.2B through 2027; Microsoft $2.9B; Oracle more than $8B over 10 years |
A government council on "watt-bit collaboration" is steering data centers toward where power is generated. In May 2026 METI shortlisted 38 candidate GX Strategic Zones; nine are data center clusters, from Hokkaido to Kagoshima.
Japan's power limits
Tokyo Waits Five to 10 Years for Grid Power
- Grid queue: TEPCO Power Grid's connection applications reached 15 GW at the end of fiscal 2025, up 20% in a year. It aims to halve lead times, and METI is weighing use-it-or-lose-it rules for reserved capacity.
- Nuclear: Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Unit 6, 1,315 MW, returned to commercial operation April 16, 2026, its first since 2012.
See Grid Tie.
Korea
Korea Has the GPUs Allocated but Not the Sites
| Project | MW or scale | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SK and AWS, Ulsan | About 41 first; 100+; expansion plan near 900 | Initial operations second half of 2027 |
| National AI Computing Center, Haenam (Solaseado) | Not disclosed; about 15,000 GPUs claimed | Broke ground August 3, 2026; completion 2028; Samsung SDS-led group |
| Stargate Korea (Samsung, SK) | About 20 each to start, reported | Stalled: no site with enough power and water (September 2026) |
| Nvidia allocation | 260,000 Blackwell GPUs: government, Samsung, SK, Hyundai, Naver | Announced October 2025; delivery status not reported |
Record
Dataset Record
- Dataset
- Japanese and Korean AI data centers
- Sources
- SoftBank Corp., KDDI, Sharp, METI, SK Group, Korea JoongAng Daily, Kyunghyang, Nikkei via TechCrunch, DatacenterDynamics, NucNet, Shulman Advisory
- Last verified
- October 2026