SoftBank plans to develop and produce batteries that do not contain costly lithium and cobalt, targeting energy storage for AI data centre networks.
SoftBank will work with South Korean startup Cosmos Lab to produce next-generation zinc-halogen batteries in Japan as early as fiscal 2027, Nikkei Asia reported on May 3.
The move is a strategy to respond to rising data centre energy consumption driven by a surge in AI demand and to strengthen energy security.
Competition in Japan over AI data centres is intensifying. Japanese private telecoms company KDDI began operating a large AI data centre in January at a Sharp LCD panel factory site in Sakai. On the same site, SoftBank is also building an AI-only data centre and has signalled it will start operations within the year.
Japan's biggest telecoms company NTT will expand the scale of its domestic data centres to more than three times the current level by 2033 to respond to surging AI demand. Its strategy is to strengthen AI infrastructure competitiveness by combining cooling technology, high-speed communications networks and support for the semiconductor industry.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr