Japan's biggest telecoms company NTT will expand the scale of its domestic data centres to more than 3 times the current level by 2033 to respond to a surge in artificial intelligence (AI) demand. It aims to strengthen AI infrastructure competitiveness by combining cooling technology, high-speed telecoms networks and support for the semiconductor industry.

On April 28 local time, Japanese outlet ITmedia reported that NTT said it plans to expand domestic data centre capacity, measured by power consumption, from 300 megawatts in fiscal 2024 to about 1 gigawatt in fiscal 2033.

The key to the plan is to deploy the latest data centres across Japan and connect them through high-speed telecoms networks to support the large-scale computing and data processing required for AI services. Akira Shimada (시마다 아키라), NTT president, said at a news conference in Tokyo, "Going forward, the use of AI for inference will spread." NTT expects inference demand to surge not only for AI model training but also for operating services, and it plans to expand infrastructure nationwide rather than focusing on specific areas.

NTT is also increasing related investment centred on group affiliates. NTT DOCOMO Business said on the same day it will provide a new data centre to Japan's next-generation semiconductor company Rapidus. The facility will support high-speed computing needed for semiconductor design and manufacturing.

NTT is also investing in cooling technology. It plans to build an urban data centre in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, in 2029 using liquid-immersion cooling. Liquid-immersion cooling lowers heat by directly submerging server equipment in coolant and is attracting attention as one way to address heat issues in high-performance AI servers.

NTT West will also complete a data centre in Fukuoka in 2029 that will be directly connected to subsea cables. The facility aims to raise efficiency in international network connectivity while also improving energy efficiency. NTT plans to bundle these new investment projects and gradually expand Japan's AI data centre base.

Competition in Japan over AI data centres is also accelerating. Japanese private telecoms company KDDI began operating a large AI data centre in January at a site in Sakai that used to be a Sharp LCD panel plant. On the same site, SoftBank is also building an AI-dedicated data centre and has said it will start operations within this year.

Amid the competition, NTT is highlighting the group's infrastructure scale and operating capabilities as strengths. Shimada said, "In terms of volume, the NTT group is bigger," and stressed comprehensive capabilities including maintenance and operating capacity and telecoms networks.

The market is also producing analysis that Japan's data centre competition is expanding beyond simply adding servers to include cooling technology, energy efficiency, integration with subsea cables and the ability to support the semiconductor industry.