March 14, 2025 – Sakai Display Products (SDP), a subsidiary of Sharp Corporation located in Sakai City, has ceased production in 2024, marking the end of large LCD panel manufacturing for televisions in Japan. According to a report by Nikkei on Friday, the SoftBank Group has signed an agreement to acquire the Sakai factory and some of its land from Sharp for approximately 100 billion yen. The group intends to transform the site into a large-scale data center, aiming to commercialize AI entities developed in collaboration with OpenAI.
Under the plan, the data center will offer customized AI model training based on enterprise customer data, providing exclusive AI entity services. The project is expected to be operational by 2026, with a power capacity of 150 megawatts, making it one of the largest computing infrastructures in Japan.
Sharp had expressed its intention to sell part of the land and buildings of the SDP Sakai Display LCD panel factory located in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, to SoftBank for 100 billion yen in December of last year. SoftBank plans to construct a large AI data center on the approximately 450,000 square meters of land with a total building area of approximately 840,000 square meters. According to Nikkei Asia, the land sold by Sharp to SoftBank accounts for about 60% of its entire Sakai factory site.
In addition to its partnership with SoftBank, Sharp has also signed a memorandum of understanding with KDDI, a Japanese telecommunications operator. KDDI will also purchase a plot of land from Sharp’s Sakai factory to build an AI data center, with the goal of starting construction within this fiscal year and achieving full operation in one year.
