According to media reports, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will provide a total of 72.5 billion yen (approximately US$470 million) in funds to five companies for the development of AI.

It is reported that these five companies, including Japanese telecom giant KDDI and cloud service provider Sakura Internet, will receive up to half of the funding for their investments in the AI field. Among them, Sakura Internet will be the largest beneficiary of this funding, and will receive 50.1 billion yen (approximately 324 million U.S. dollars), followed by KDDI, which is expected to receive 10.2 billion yen (approximately 66 million U.S. dollars) USD) financial support.

Some people believe that there are two main reasons why the Japanese government funds corporate AI projects this time.

First, high-performance computing clusters are key infrastructure for developing generative AI, but Japanese companies currently still rely on American companies such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in terms of computing power, lacking technical autonomy and security.

Secondly, the multi-billion-dollar construction cost of supercomputers and the fact that GPUs are “hard to find” and very expensive have also caused Japanese companies to face financial difficulties.

The Japanese government is expected to announce this funding plan in the near future to strengthen Japan’s development capabilities in the field of AI. In addition, the government hopes to use funding to help Japanese companies catch up with American competitors who have made large investments in AI.