SoftBank plans to launch AI cloud services in the U.S., and begin leasing computing power in the next fiscal year.

SoftBank Group is betting on a new wave of AI infrastructure expansion, planning to lease AI computing power to U.S. enterprises through a newly established subsidiary, and to turn its carrier business into a new profit engine with the potential to be worth tens of trillions of yen.

According to a statement released by SoftBank on Thursday, SoftBank Corp. and SoftBank Group will establish a joint venture, SB Neo, this month, and plan to begin providing AI chips and cloud services to U.S. enterprises—including hyperscale cloud providers—starting in the next fiscal year. Citing people familiar with the matter, media reports say that if the new U.S. cloud business expands smoothly, the annual operating profit of SoftBank’s telecom subsidiary could rise to between 3 trillion and 4 trillion yen, which is roughly three to four times its current level.

Junichi Miyakawa, head of SoftBank Corp., characterized this U.S. rollout as the company’s “second startup,” and said the new business has the potential to generate profits “another magnitude” higher. This statement reflects SoftBank’s efforts to transform its carrier assets into a core infrastructure platform for the AI era. The news holds significant reference value for investors who are tracking how SoftBank’s earnings structure is evolving.

New Company Structure and Scale Targets

SB Neo will be 51% owned by SoftBank Corp. and 49% by SoftBank Group. It is positioned in the “neocloud” track—an emerging infrastructure services category focused on leasing AI computing power to enterprises. According to Miyakawa’s plan, the joint venture aims to continuously expand its computing capacity, targeting an increase in data center supply capacity to 10 gigawatts (GW) around 2030, in order to meet the demands of large-scale AI model training and inference.

SoftBank is planning a data-center-centric project in Ohio with a capacity of 10GW. With a scale among the top globally, the investment amount is approximately $500 billion. Meanwhile, SoftBank’s telecom subsidiary is also advancing its footprint within Japan, building data center campus areas in Hokkaido and in Sakai City, Osaka, respectively.

Potential Customers and Competitive Landscape

OpenAI may become SB Neo’s most natural early customer. SoftBank Group has committed that its cumulative investment in OpenAI will reach approximately $65 billion by around October this year. This deep, binding relationship provides potential foundational demand support for the neocloud business.

However, competition in this track is getting increasingly fierce. Neocloud-focused service providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius have already moved ahead to capture the market; industry giants such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud also offer AI computing power leasing services. According to a report by Bloomberg News, Meta Platforms is also formulating similar expansion plans.

Electricity Resources as a Key Moat

Faced with a crowded competitive landscape, Miyakawa pointed out that SoftBank’s differentiating advantage lies in its ability to secure electricity resources—mainly sourced from natural gas power plants. In the computing power race, a stable and sufficient electricity supply has become one of the core bottlenecks constraining data center expansion, and SoftBank views this as a key competitive barrier to entering the U.S. market.

SoftBank Corp. has long been an important source of cash flow for SoftBank Group and previously laid the financial foundation for founder Masayoshi Son’s early-stage venture investments. Now, as Son shifts his strategic focus to AI hardware and data centers, Japan’s third-largest mobile carrier is being assigned an entirely new historical role.

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