Singtel and Hitachi to Develop AI-Driven Data Center, Cloud Services in Japan

By Kimberley Kao

Singtel and Hitachi are teaming up to tap rapidly growing demand for AI and cloud services in Japan, looking to develop data centers across the country and potentially the wider Asia-Pacific region.

The Singapore-based telco and the Japanese conglomerate said that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on next-generation data centers and cloud services.

No investment details were provided in the joint statement.

The agreement builds on a partnership announced in June to trial and integrate Singtel's Paragon platform for 5G, edge and cloud computing with Hitachi's AI applications for manufacturing operations, the companies said in the statement.

Bill Chang, chief executive of Digital InfraCo, the Singtel unit that will lead the efforts, said the Hitachi tie-up opens up opportunities in a strategically important market.

Japan's data-center market is one of the largest and fastest-growing in APAC, expected to expand at a compound annual rate of nearly 10% and reach $5 billion by 2028, the statement said.

The collaboration will also look at "green power solutions, cooling systems, storage infrastructure and data management" for data centers, as well as AI-powered applications for enterprises' digitalization efforts, the companies said.

Hitachi in addition said it plans to explore the use of Singtel's GPU-as-a-service offering for its internal AI applications and workloads.

Digital InfraCo's portfolio includes Nxera, its regional data center arm that is developing a platform of sustainable, hyper-connected AI-ready data centers in APAC.

Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2024 05:07 ET (09:07 GMT)

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