Systems

Tech investment giant wants batteries for its own AI datacenters, and lots of them

SoftBank is getting into the datacenter battery business and plans to start manufacturing them on the scale of gigawatt-hours per year of capacity to support the power needs of AI infrastructure, including its own.

The Japan-based tech investment biz says it aims to deploy the battery systems it is developing at its own large-scale AI server farms initially, but plans to make them more widely available in future.

It hopes to begin mass production in financial year 2027, and expects the operation to generate revenue of ¥100 billion (over $600 million) per year by 2030.

SoftBank is working with two South Korean firms that have a track record in advanced battery-related technologies.…