SoftBank Completes AI System With 4,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs

Tokyo, Japan — SoftBank Corp. announced Wednesday that it has completed the construction of an artificial intelligence computing system utilizing more than 4,000 NVIDIA Blackwell graphics processing units.

The Japanese telecommunications company said the system was completed on July 22 and consists of NVIDIA DGX B200 systems configured as an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD.

SoftBank said the installation brings its total GPU count to more than 10,000 units with a combined processing capacity of 13.7 exaflops.

SoftBank said the system incorporates NVIDIA's Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking technology and supports NVIDIA AI Enterprise software.

The company stated that, according to its research as of July 23, the infrastructure represents what it claims is the world's largest operational NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD utilizing Blackwell GPU architecture.

The company said its subsidiary SB Intuitions will use the computing infrastructure to develop large language models for Japanese language applications.

SoftBank stated that SB Intuitions developed a language model with approximately 4.6 trillion parameters in fiscal 2024 and plans to release a 70-billion-parameter model, "Sarashina mini," in fiscal 2025.

The company began operating an AI infrastructure with more than 2,000 NVIDIA Ampere GPUs, providing 0.7 exaflops of processing capacity, in September 2023.

In October 2024, the company announced the addition of approximately 4,000 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, which increased the total processing capacity to 4.0 exaflops at the time.

The company reported that the infrastructure development received recognition under Japan's Economic Security Promotion Act from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry through a Cloud Program Supply Security Plan.

SoftBank plans to offer computing services to Japanese companies and research institutions, in addition to internal use.

The company stated that the project aligns with its efforts to develop social infrastructure for integrating artificial intelligence into society.

Financial details of the infrastructure investment were not disclosed.