SoftBank Starts AI System with Nvidia GB200 Chips

Tokyo, Japan - SoftBank Corp said on Thursday that its AI computing infrastructure, equipped with Nvidia GB200 NVL72 systems, began operations on Dec. 22.

The company said it will use the infrastructure to provide GPU computing resources as a service and to develop Sarashina, a large language model developed by SB Intuitions.

The NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 is a rack-scale system containing 36 Nvidia Grace CPUs and 72 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs per rack, according to SoftBank's statement.

The operational infrastructure comprises 1,224 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, SoftBank said. 

The company stated it plans to expand the system to over 4,000 GPUs, providing processing capacity of 10.6 exaflops.

The infrastructure uses liquid cooling technology that directly cools GPUs and CPUs, SoftBank said.

SoftBank said it received certification under Japan's Economic Security Promotion Act from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry for a cloud program supply assurance plan in May 2024.

The company stated it will use the infrastructure internally and offer it as a service to domestic companies and research institutions.

SB Intuitions is a SoftBank subsidiary.