Key facts
- NTT and SoftBank are developing AI cybersecurity systems that process data within Japan.
- The systems aim to meet demand for data sovereignty by diagnosing software vulnerabilities without sending data to the U.S.
- The companies are partnering to create a national AI data-sharing platform.
- This platform will allow Japanese companies to share and monetize data for training sovereign AI models.
- The initiative is supported by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
- Major Japanese industrial leaders are considering integration into the data framework.
NTT and SoftBank Corp. are separately expanding the rollout of cybersecurity systems that process artificial intelligence data entirely within Japan, helping meet demand for data sovereignty by diagnosing software vulnerabilities without sending data to the U.S., Nikkei has learned. The companies are creating ways to offer advanced AI services developed in the U.S. without sending customer data across the Pacific.
SoftBank Corp. and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have entered a partnership to construct a unified, national artificial intelligence data-sharing platform in Japan. This initiative aims to solve data fragmentation, a major obstacle to corporate AI adoption in the country. By creating a secure, privacy-preserving data exchange layer, the joint effort will allow Japanese corporations across manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, automotive, and logistics to safely share and monetize proprietary data to train high-precision, domain-specific sovereign artificial intelligence models.
For decades, Japanese corporate data has remained locked inside isolated silos due to strict privacy laws, trade secret theft concerns, and a lack of standardized data governance frameworks. The SoftBank-NTT platform utilizes a federated data exchange model based on privacy-preserving computation, meaning raw corporate data never leaves the originating company's premises or private cloud servers. AI models are trained locally, with only encrypted model parameters and anonymized weights transmitted across the central network.
The joint platform is a cornerstone of Japan’s broader national sovereign AI strategy, supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Major industrial leaders, including Toyota Motor Corporation, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Hitachi, Panasonic, and Fujitsu, are evaluating integration into the national data framework. SoftBank's high-density AI supercomputing clusters will be paired with NTT's all-optical network infrastructure to power autonomous factory automation, intelligent robotics, and enterprise software.