To expand its cloud empire in Japan, Amazon Web Services (AWS) intends to invest 2.3 trillion yen, or $15.5 billion.
At a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, the US cloud giant disclosed its plans. The funding, which will be spread over the following five years, will propel the building of other datacenters throughout the area. These will aid in supporting the ever expanding amount of data that Amazon’s network is processing, which is reportedly being driven mostly by the rush to create, train, and implement AI models at scale.
“Our investment in cloud infrastructure generates a ripple across Japanese industries, including the public and government sector,” AWS Japan President Tadao Nagasaki said. “It will help more Japanese organizations with the ability to access and adopt new, emerging, and transformational digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
Naturally, this is not AWS’s first foray into the Japanese market. According to the company, Amazon has committed 1.51 trillion yen, or roughly $10 billion, between 2012 and 2022 to develop two cloud zones in Tokyo and Osaka. Amazon has not stated whether or not the most recent investment would result in the growth of its current datacenters and/or the creation of new cloud regions in the nation.
The higher rate of spending over the next five years probably indicates that expensive GPUs and other AI accelerators will receive more attention.
With its current GDP of over $4.9 trillion, Japan is expected to benefit from the build out to the tune of nearly $37.8 billion, according to AWS.
Takuya Hirai, Japan’s minister of digital affairs, praised the economic prospects brought about by Amazon’s proposed expansion. “The development of digital infrastructure in Japan is key to strengthening the country’s industrial competitiveness, and datacenters play an important role to this end,” he said.
The cloud giant’s most recent significant investment in the Asia Pacific area is its foray into Japan. AWS declared in the spring of last year that it will invest 1.05 trillion rupees, or $12.7 billion, to increase its footprint in India.
Not just Amazon recognizes the potential in the APAC region. Google announced the location of its first datacenter in Japan, in Inzai, in March. Microsoft, however, has been running datacenters in Japan since 2014 and is continuing to grow. Redmond recently revealed significant pricing increases for most of Asia, with Japanese customers anticipating a 20 percent increase for both cloud and on-premises products when they take effect in April.