On Friday, Japanese investment firm SoftBank Corp SFTBF SFTBY announced an agreement with Sharp Corp to purchase land, buildings, and assets tied to Sharp’s liquid crystal panel factory in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture. The acquisition, valued at approximately 100 billion yen ($676 million), is intended to support the development of a large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) data center.

SoftBank confirmed to TechCrunch that the purchase aligns with its strategic partnership with OpenAI.

SoftBank will use approximately 450,000 square meters of land and about 840,000 square meters of buildings at the Sharp Sakai Factory to build an AI data center with a 150-megawatt power capacity, aiming to begin operations in 2026, TechCruch reports.

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The company plans to expand the power receiving capacity to over 250 megawatts.

SoftBank will use this AI data center to develop generative AI and other AI-related businesses. It will also provide it to universities, research institutes, and companies to meet various external needs.

SoftBank is reportedly negotiating a potential investment of $15 billion to $25 billion in OpenAI to become the largest investor in the ChatGPT creator, surpassing Microsoft Corp‘s MSFT $14 billion.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump announced the $500 billion OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle Corp ORCL initiative when OpenAI said Stargate would expand to as many as 10 sites. OpenAI and Oracle plan to begin filling a new data center in Texas with AI chips from Nvidia Corp to get the first facility for their $100 billion Stargate infrastructure venture up and running.

OpenAI collaborated with Oracle on the design and delivery of the Abilene data center, and Oracle is in charge of the supercomputer being built there.

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