Japan's SoftBank and Nvidia announced on Tuesday a series of collaborations designed to accelerate Japan's AI (Artificial Intelligence) initiatives while also unlocking billions of dollars in AI revenue opportunities for telecommunications providers worldwide. During his keynote at Nivida AI Summit Japan, Nivida founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced that SoftBank is building Japan's most powerful AI supercomputer using its Blackwell platform and plans to use the Grace Blackwell platform for its next supercomputer.
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Combined 5G and AI Network
Additionally, Nvidia revealed that SoftBank, using its AI Aerial accelerated computing platform, has successfully piloted what the company claims is the world's first combined AI and 5G telecom network — a breakthrough in computing that opens AI revenue streams potentially worth billions of dollars to telecom operators.
Local AI Marketplace
SoftBank also aims to create a local AI marketplace, using Nvidia AI Enterprise software, that can meet the demand for local, secure AI computing. This new service, which supports AI training and edge AI inference, reportedly positions SoftBank to become the AI grid for Japan, facilitating new business opportunities for the creation, distribution, and use of AI services across the country's industries, consumers and enterprises.
Vision for AI and 5G Innovation
"With SoftBank's significant investment in Nvidia's full-stack AI, Omniverse and 5G AI-RAN platforms, Japan is leaping into the AI industrial revolution to become a global leader, driving a new era of growth across the telecommunications, transportation, robotics and healthcare industries in ways that will greatly benefit humankind in the age of AI," said Huang.
"Countries and regions worldwide are accelerating the adoption of AI for social and economic growth, and society is undergoing significant transformation," said Junichi Miyakawa, president and CEO of SoftBank. "Through our long collaboration with Nvidia, SoftBank is leading this transformation from the forefront. With our extremely powerful AI infrastructure and our new, distributed AI-RAN solution 'AITRAS' that reinvents 5G networks for AI, we will accelerate innovation across the country and throughout the world."
Also Read: NVIDIA AI Aerial: Merging Wireless Networks and Generative AI on a Unified Platform
Development of SoftBank AI-RAN
A key milestone in the collaboration is the development of SoftBank's AI-RAN (AI-powered Radio Access Network), which integrates AI and 5G workloads. This solution allows telecom operators to monetise unused network capacity for AI services, offering a potential return of up to 219 percent on infrastructure investments.
SoftBank's Plans for Nvidia Supercomputers
SoftBank will receive the first Nvidia DGX B200 systems to build its DGX SuperPOD supercomputer. It plans to use the Blackwell-powered system for its own generative AI development and AI-related Business, as well as for universities, research institutions, and businesses across Japan. Upon completion, it will be Japan's most powerful, designed for large language models with Nvidia AI Enterprise software and Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, the official release said.
Grace Blackwell Platform
SoftBank also plans to build another Nvidia-accelerated supercomputer using a Grace Blackwell platform, featuring liquid-cooled GB200 NVL72 systems with Blackwell GPUs and Grace CPUs.
SoftBank Pilots AI-RAN
Working closely with Nvidia, SoftBank has developed a new telecommunications network that can run both AI and 5G workloads at the same time, known as an artificial intelligence radio access network, or AI-RAN.
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AI Revenue Producing Assets
Nvidia says this new infrastructure offers operators the ability to transform their base stations from cost centers into AI revenue-producing assets.
SoftBank's Successful AI-RAN Field Trial
Through an outdoor trial conducted in the Kanagawa prefecture, SoftBank demonstrated that its Nvidia-accelerated AI-RAN solution has achieved carrier-grade 5G performance and was able to do so while using the network's excess capacity to run AI inference workloads concurrently.
Monetising Network Capacity for AI Services
Nvidia explained that traditional telco networks are designed to handle peak loads and, on average, have used only one-third of that capacity. With the common computing capability provided by AI-RAN, it is expected that telcos now have the opportunity to monetise the remaining two-thirds of capacity for AI inference services.
Revenue Potential from AI-RAN Investments
Nvidia and SoftBank estimate that telco operators can earn roughly USD 5 in AI inference revenue from every USD 1 of capex it invests in new AI-RAN infrastructure.
Also Read: SoftBank Enhances AI Platform by Installing 4,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs
Real-World Inference Runs on AI-RAN
For the trial, SoftBank used Nvidia AI Enterprise to build real-world AI inference applications, including autonomous vehicle remote support, robotics control and multimodal retrieval-automated generation at the edge. All inference workloads were able to run optimally on SoftBank's AI-RAN network.
Future Energy-Efficient RAN Solutions
SoftBank plans to incorporate Nvidia Aerial RAN Computer-1 systems, which it estimates can use 40 percent less power than traditional 5G network infrastructure, into its solution moving forward.
Also Read: SoftBank and Ericsson Partner to Explore AI-Integrated RAN Solutions
Collaborating Partners
Other partners that contributed to the trial of SoftBank’s AI-RAN solution include Fujitsu and Red Hat.
AI Ecosystem for Demand and Supply
SoftBank aims to build an ecosystem that connects the demand and supply of AI technology by using Nvidia AI Enterprise serverless application programming interfaces and its in-house developed orchestrator. This enables SoftBank to dispatch external AI inferencing jobs to an AI-RAN server when computing resources are available to deliver localised, low-latency, secure inferencing services.
Commercialisation of AI-RAN Networks
"Shifting from single-purpose to multi-purpose AI-RAN networks can mean 5x the revenue for every dollar of capex invested," said Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecom at Nvidia. "SoftBank's live field trial marks a huge step toward AI-RAN commercialisation with the validation of technology feasibility, performance and economics."
Vision for AI-Driven Telecom Innovation
"SoftBank’s 'AITRAS' is the first AI-RAN solution developed through a five-year collaboration with Nvidia. It integrates and coordinates AI and RAN workloads through the SoftBank-developed orchestrator, enhancing communication efficiency by running dense cells on a single Nvidia-accelerated GPU server," said Ryuji Wakikawa, vice president and head of the Research Institute of Advanced Technology at SoftBank. "We are confident this AI-driven innovation, AITRAS, will pave the way for new business models in telecommunications, serving as a crucial factor in the transformation of mobile operators."
