KDDI’s data centre at the former Sharp Sakai plant (Image: KDDI)
Japanese telecom KDDI has begun operations at its AI data centre south of Osaka, less than 10 months after buying the former LCD factory site from Sharp for JPY 10 billion (then $68 million).
The 48-megawatt facility comprises 57,000 square metres (613,543 square feet) of floor area across four storeys at the industrial complex just across the Yamato River in Sakai. KDDI’s April purchase represented the smaller portion of the Sharp Sakai site after Japan’s SoftBank acquired a larger section for conversion into an OpenAI data centre for JPY 100 billion.
The Osaka Sakai Data Center entered service last Thursday, reusing the large-scale power and cooling facilities from the factory site while incorporating water-cooling technology cultivated at KDDI’s Telehouse data centre in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, according to the TSE-listed telecom.
“As a result, KDDI was able to build this AI data centre in just six months and begin operation in a short period of time,” the company said in a release.
Nvidia Inside
Osaka Sakai Data Center is equipped with Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 chipset pairing the Blackwell GPU and Grace CPU for advanced computing power, according to KDDI.
KDDI Corporation president and CEO Hiromichi Matsuda (Image: KDDI)
As well as supporting Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence platform, the facility aims to promote the use of AI in the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries and aid in the development of domestic large language models — the systems that train AI using vast amounts of text.
“KDDI will promote the advancement of digital infrastructure that integrates AI with networks, including this AI data centre, and will contribute to strengthening Japan’s industrial competitiveness by accelerating the social implementation of AI together with various partner companies,” said the group led by president and CEO Hiromichi Matsuda.
SoftBank aims to convert its share of the Sharp Sakai site into a 150MW facility after securing the asset in one of last year’s biggest data centre deals. The 840,000 square metre bit barn is expected to start operations this year and could expand to over 250MW in future, according to the investment group founded by billionaire Masayoshi Son.
Quick Delivery
With its power delivery timelines of 3-5 years versus 8-10 years in Tokyo, Osaka offers competitive advantages for data centre developers seeking faster execution, according to JLL.
In October of last year, NTT Global Data Centers broke ground on a 36MW campus in Ibaraki City, 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) north of central Osaka, with the first of two 18MW buildings expected to be completed by early 2028.
That same month, industrial giant ESR and London-based Colt Data Centre Services announced a joint venture to develop the first phase of a 130MW campus north of Osaka, with construction set to begin in 2027 and the first data centre building expected to be ready for service in late 2029. The news came shortly after Singapore-based ESR completed the 25MW first phase of its maiden data centre campus in Japan, the 130MW Cosmosquare in Osaka’s seaside Nanko Kita precinct.
Earlier in 2025, Singapore’s CapitaLand Investment acquired land in Osaka to develop its first data centre in Japan, a 50MW facility, at a total project cost of $700 million, while EQT-backed EdgeConneX picked up a second data centre site near the Osaka-Kyoto border to boost its platform in the country to a planned capacity of 350MW.
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