Recently, we heard that Sharp had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to sell part of its Sakai factory to KDDI, to be converted into an AI data center. Now, the Nikkei is reporting a more solid arrangement betwen Sharp and Softbank for more than half of the land and facilities.
Nikkei noted that Sharp and SoftBank each held board meetings on December 20, deciding on the sale and acquisition. If SoftBank foresees a sufficient mid- to long-term power supply, a formal sales contract with Sharp is expected to be signed in fiscal year (FY) 2024. SoftBank will acquire about 60% of the site’s land along with the panel factory, power infrastructure, and cooling systems.
Construction on the data center is scheduled to begin in FY 2025, with operations to start in 2026. Initial power capacity is projected to be around 150 megawatts—one of the largest in Japan—and plans call for quickly increasing this to 250 megawatts. The strength of the requirements has raised some doubts abou the feasibility of Softbank’s ambitions for Sharp’s former LCD factory.
The estimated sale price is around 100 billion yen ($6.4 billion). SoftBank plans to build an artificial intelligence (AI) data center there, including the purchase of image processing semiconductors (GPUs) for data processing, with a total investment possibly reaching several hundred billion yen.
