Sharp and Nippon Telecom giant KDDI plan to build “Asia's largest AI data center,” which will be equipped with Nvidia's GPU servers. This center will be built on the site of the LCD panel factory for Sharp TVs. As the factory stops production, the number of LCD panel production sites for Japanese televisions will be “cleared”.
With the advent of the AI era, Japan's Sharp (Sharp) stopped production at the last factory in Japan that produced large LCD panels for televisions, and began the path of AI transformation. The company plans to cooperate with telecom giant KDDI to build “Asia's largest AI data center.”
On August 21, Sharp's Osaka factory, “Sakai Display Products Co., Ltd.” (SDP), which produces LCD panels for televisions, completely stopped production. Sharp is the only manufacturer in Japan that produces large LCD panels for televisions. With the discontinuation of SDP production, the number of production sites for LCD panels for Japanese TVs “went to zero.”
At the same time, Sharp began a transformation into the AI era. Recently, Sharp and Nippon Telecom giant KDDI announced a partnership to build “Asia's largest AI data center” on the site of the SDP factory in Osaka. The project's partners also include two IT vendors, US-based microcomputers and Japanese DataSection.
KDDI said in a statement that the data center will be equipped with Nvidia's newly released GB200 NVL72 server racks with 72 GPUs based on Nvidia's Blackwell architecture released earlier this year, dedicated to the training and operation of AI models.
Although specific technical details about the data center have not been disclosed, reports from Nikkei Asia indicate that the center will be equipped with at least 1,000 servers. KDDI briefly stated that this will be the largest AI data center in Asia.
Furthermore, the AI data center of Nvidia's strategic partner and Japanese cloud service provider giant SAKURA Inernet Co., Ltd. (SAKURA Inernet) has also been reported to enter Sharp's SDP factory.
KDDI anticipates that the former Sharp SDP plant will be able to provide enough power and space to meet the power needs of AI data centers.
According to reports, Sharp's parent company, Foxconn, plans to close the SDP factory and turn it into a data center because of increasing losses in its LCD division. The plant is expected to officially close in September. Sharp's chief financial officer, Yoshio Kosaka, said that it is planned to stop processing liquid crystal displays and reduce the inventory of TV panels to zero by the end of March 2025.