Countries / Asia-Pacific and Middle East
Japan
Japan has a promotion-first AI law, a government AI Basic Plan and a joint power-and-network programme to site data centres, plus an open national AI supercomputer.
The AI Promotion Act (Act No. 53 of 2025) is fully in force since 1 September 2025 and sets principles, an AI Strategic Headquarters chaired by the Prime Minister and a requirement for an AI Basic Plan; its outline lists guidance, advice and public announcement rather than sanctions. A first AI Basic Plan was adopted by Cabinet on 23 December 2025. Two ministries run a Watt-Bit Collaboration programme to plan electricity and telecom networks together for new data centres. For someone seeking compute, the AIST-run ABCI 3.0 system is open to outside users by application, and the successor to the Fugaku supercomputer is planned for around 2030.
AI policy and activity
Japan treats AI as a promotion and coordination matter at national level. The Basic Plan stresses faster public-sector adoption, domestic foundation models and physical AI, and a larger AI Safety Institute. The Cabinet Office outline calls for facilities such as data centres to be developed and shared as part of the basic measures.
Power and grid
METI and MIC state that the rapid rise in data centre demand and their large electricity needs make joint planning of power and telecom networks necessary, citing the February 2025 Cabinet-approved GX2040 Vision. The pages read give no capacity or connection-queue figures.
Data centres and compute
| Site | Where | Status | Notes and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABCI 3.0 AIST (built), AIST Solutions (operator) | Japan (site not stated on the page read) | Operating | Primary. Operator page: 766 compute nodes with 6,128 NVIDIA H200 GPUs, 75 PB storage, about 6.2 AI-EFLOPS half precision; launched in 2018 and upgraded to version 3.0 in January 2025. Open to external applicants; the site notes point-issuance restrictions for FY2026 (17 September 2026). (source) |
| Fugaku and FugakuNEXT RIKEN Center for Computational Science | Japan (site not stated on the pages read) | Operating | Primary. Fugaku is in operation. RIKEN, Fujitsu and NVIDIA announced on 22 August 2025 the FugakuNEXT initiative, aimed at operation around 2030 and the first Japanese flagship to use GPU accelerators. FugakuNEXT itself is planned, not built. (source) |
| SoftBank Sakai AI data centre SoftBank Corp. | Sakai, Osaka | Planned | Primary, but dated. SoftBank press release of 7 June 2024 announced a 150MW-plus data centre at the former Sharp Sakai plant, aiming for full operation in 2025 and over 400MW later. We did not read a source confirming it entered operation. (source) |
Rules and programmes
| Instrument | Kind | Status | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Act on Promotion of Research and Development, and Utilization of AI-related Technology (Act No. 53 of 2025) | Law | In force from 1 September 2025 | Primary. Official English translation. Chapter II covers promoting development and sharing of facilities and equipment; Chapter III the AI Basic Plan; Chapter IV the AI Strategic Headquarters. Full-enforcement date from the Cabinet Office outline (https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/ai/ai_hou_gaiyou_en.pdf), which gives partial enforcement on 4 June 2025. |
| First AI Basic Plan | Policy | In force from 23 December 2025 | Reported. Jiji Press via Adnkronos: Cabinet adopted the plan on 23 December 2025, to be updated annually, with a roadmap including an investment target hoped for in summer 2026. We could not fetch the Cabinet Office original, and did not confirm whether the roadmap has been issued. |
| Public-Private Advisory Council on Watt-Bit Collaboration | Programme | In force from 18 March 2025 | Primary. METI and MIC joint council, launched 18 March 2025 (https://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2025/0318_001.html), published Report 1.0 on 12 June 2025 to coordinate electricity and telecom infrastructure for data centres. The report itself is in Japanese only and was not read. |
| Watt-bit collaboration demonstration projects, FY2026 | Programme | In force from 15 July 2026 | Primary. MIC selected all seven proposals received for demonstrations of distributed data centre operation and workload shifting over the All-Photonics Network; published materials are Japanese only. |
Checked on 2 October 2026 and due for review by 1 January 2027. Many sources are trade press or law-firm summaries rather than official texts, and statuses such as reported or unconfirmed are shown as the source gives them. This is a summary, not legal advice. If something is wrong or out of date, tell us.