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The investment is expected to add over 37 billion to the Japanese GDP
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has today announced plans to invest 2.2 trillion Japanese yen ($15.24 billion) in Japan’s cloud computing infrastructure by 2027.
The investment, which was announced at a press conference in Tokyo today, will go towards the expansion and strengthening of facilities in Tokyo and Osaka to meet growing customer demand.
AWS says the strengthening of its data centres and developing its cloud computing infrastructure is vital for the support of future AI services, including generative AI, the demand for which is rapidly growing. The boom in popularity of services such as ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by U.S.-based OpenAI, is likely to have contributed to the investment demand.
AWS have had a presence in Japan since 2009 and have been steadily increasing their investments in the country. From 2011 to 2022, AWS spent 1.51 trillion yen ($10.20 billion) on increasing cloud capacity in the country.
Japan is not the only market in which AWS is expanding.
In May last year, AWS pledged to invest a huge $12.7 billion in the Indian data centre market by 2030, once again to meet the country’s growing demand for cloud services.
The fact that the investment in Japan is even higher shows AWS is placing huge importance on the Japanese market, with its advanced level of digitalisation likely giving it a more urgent need for cloud infrastructure.
“We see Japan as a very important country,” Tadao Nagasaki, head of the Japan unit of AWS, told the press conference. “The investment will support Japanese customers’ data utilisation, generate various economic spillover effects and contribute to Japan’s growth,” he continued.
The global cloud computing market is dominated by three main players: AWS, Microsoft and Google, who together have two thirds of the market share. The market was valued at $495.3 Billion in 2022.
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