Case study

Democratizing AI across Japan, Asia, and the world

Established in its current form in 2000, KDDI Corporation is now Japan's second-largest mobile network operator, serving about 33 million smartphone subscribers through its flagship brand, au.

KDDI plays an instrumental role in shaping modern society—both across Japan and globally—as an enabler of seamless communications, powerful IT environments, and cross-industry digital transformation. Partnering with innovators and funders, KDDI fosters startups in artificial intelligence (AI), deep tech, and climate technology, developing a powerful influence on the world of advanced technology.

"KDDI began as a telecommunications business. By building connectivity and making it affordable for everyone, we made an important contribution to the democratization of communication," says Toru Maruta, executive officer for technology strategy and planning at KDDI Corporation. "Our goal is to create an environment where we can connect everyone everywhere."

Japan is facing growing social issues, including a declining population, labor shortages, and environmental issues. For many, AI is seen as a beacon of hope, offering the technology with the potential to enable Japan to maintain and build on its position as a global economic leader.

AI is also a core component of KDDI's Vision KDDI VISION 2030, which aims to leverage the power of data to strengthen the company's expertise in connectivity, and incorporate digital innovation across both its business and others.

"KDDI VISION 2030 is about creating a world where thoughts can be connected," Maruta adds. "We want to realize this VISION not only through practical connections but also by building a society where we can make what we think a reality."

Toru Maruta
Executive Officer for Technology Strategy and Planning, KDDI Corporation

KDDI's WAKONX was structured as a platform to power Japan's digital transformation for the AI era. It's the result of a range of goals and motivations that align closely with KDDI VISION 2030, including a drive to make AI accessible to a wide range of markets—from retail and logistics to smart cities and public infrastructure. It also aims to address some of Japan's environmental and demographic challenges.

"We operate in a competitive environment, so we want to provide the best products, but we need to do that in a way that is useful and affordable to our customers," Maruta says. "The goal of WAKONX is to make more use of AI and also make it something that customers can use, while also striking a balance with priorities such as energy conservation and carbon neutrality." For Maruta and KDDI, it's a logical progression of the digital transformation initiatives that the business has been supporting since the 2010s.

"Generative AI (GenAI) is totally changing industries, how we work, and even how we think," he continues. "Instead of searching the web, people can just ask questions and get direct answers. But that needs to be supported by a specific and powerful infrastructure, which is why we decided to develop WAKONX to support our consumers and enterprise customers, and the wider Japanese economy."

KDDI already had an extensive data center environment but quickly realized that it wasn't capable of supporting the demands of AI. "The AI infrastructure we needed has to be water cooled, which ordinary data centers aren't," Maruta explains. "It also needs much more power than a typical data center. So, we decided to start from scratch."

Maruta mapped out the project precisely and quickly realized that the four years it would take to build a completely new data center was incompatible with KDDI's goal of a quick time to market. The solution was twofold: it purchased an existing LCD factory that already had water cooling in place, which it could then repurpose, and it sought help from a proven expert in the field.

"We can build a data center, we can build a cloud, but building a high performance computing system and making it work, that's another story,' says Maruta. "Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been involved with projects like this for a long time, and it was important for us to harness that experience and reduce the time to market."

HPE supplies the cutting-edge hardware and IT solutions that form the backbone of KDDI's new water-cooled, AI-optimized data center facilities. The globally recognized HPE products were chosen for their reliability and performance, reinforcing KDDI's efforts to offer secure, efficient, and advanced AI services.

Equally important was the expertise HPE brings in data center cooling and operations. This was the first time that KDDI had implemented such advanced cooling at scale in Japan, and it turned to HPE to assist with the verification, demonstration experiments, and troubleshooting of unique challenges associated with liquid-cooled servers.

HPE also provided valuable links with NVIDIA, together forming a powerful three-way partnership to deliver KDDI VISION 2030.

"NVIDIA provides the GPUs and CPUs together, and HPE places them into the servers making the entire system work," Maruta adds. "The scale we are building is around two exaflops, which is sufficiently sizeable to deliver to enterprise customers."

HPE worked closely with KDDI throughout the planning, implementation, and construction phases. It was a partnership based on sharing wisdom, moving quickly, and joining forces to solve unforeseen problems as they arose. This combination of a collaborative mindset and technical proficiency enabled both companies to realize KDDI's ambitious vision for the data center and to deliver services reliably to end customers.

"Our relationship with HPE is very much a partnership. We're not just purchasing the GPU infrastructure; we're building value as a team so we can deliver that AI resource together," Maruta explains. "We're also going to manage the go-to-market together, but it's not about acquiring customers—it's about collectively bringing value to them."

HPE technology is also enabling KDDI to offer a highly secure environment for customers' data and AI workloads—allowing end customers to know exactly where their data resides and helping to ensure exclusive, private operation of GPU resources. For Maruta, this is a critical value proposition for KDDI's enterprises and public sector users.

"That secure environment is called a sovereign system, and one of our primary objectives is to provide such an environment," he adds. "We want to add value to the Japanese market, and we are partnering with HPE to spread that value not only to Japan, but also to Asia and the rest of the world."

HPE's strong global track record and willingness to work closely with KDDI and other partner operators are playing a vital role in building confidence and maintaining momentum—both in this project and also in future innovations. The result is a reliable, energy-efficient technological foundation for KDDI's continued expansion in AI and other next-generation infrastructure services.

"It will be vital to continue to provide infrastructure and services in line with changes in AI, and we need to keep up to speed with that and deliver it to our customers," Maruta concludes. "That's why we work with HPE. It has that global knowledge, knows what we need to do next, and understands the situation in the Japanese and world markets."

Toru Maruta
Executive Officer for Technology Strategy and Planning, KDDI Corporation

Document ID: a50014057enw