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KDDI Corp. has commenced operations at a new AI data center in Sakai, Osaka, located on the site of a former Sharp Corp. LCD plant. The facility, which cost 10 billion yen to develop, features advanced servers powered by Nvidia's GPUs, designed for generative AI applications.

The data center spans 57,000 square meters and is fully powered by renewable energy. KDDI aims to deploy the center primarily for the pharmaceutical sector starting in April, intending to enhance drug development and reduce costs associated with electronic medical records analysis.

At full capacity, the center consumes electricity equivalent to approximately 12,000 households, although KDDI has achieved a 60% reduction in electricity usage compared to prior technologies. The transformation from a television manufacturing site to an AI data center underscores Japan's shift toward AI as a potential economic growth driver.