Oracle announced on Wednesday (17 April) that it will invest over $8bn in the next 10 years to help meet the demand for cloud and AI infrastructure in Japan.
The cloud giant said it aims to enable the government and Japanese businesses to move critical workflow onto Oracle Cloud.
Oracle’s operations will be expanded across Japan, with extra support from the Japanese engineering team and increasing customer support.
“By growing our cloud footprint and providing a team to support sovereign operations in Japan, we are giving our customers and partners the opportunity to innovate with AI and other cloud services while supporting their regulatory and sovereignty requirements,” Toshimitsu Misawa, CEO and member of the board at Oracle Japan, said in a statement.
Oracle launched its cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Other leading cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Google have been in Japan for several years.
Microsoft announced in April it would invest $2.9bn in cloud and AI in Japan. The company opened its cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka in 2014.
The news comes as the value of AI and cloud deals in Japan peaked in 2018, according to GlobalData’s deal database.
In 2018, the value of both AI and cloud deals in Japan totalled $29.4bn, a significant increase over the following year, which saw the value of deals plummet to $1.6bn.
The value of Japan's AI and cloud deals totalled $17.6bn in 2023, a huge increase over 2022, which saw the value of deals fall to $1.8bn.