Abu Dhabi's Mubadala weighs USD 6.3 billion AI data centre in Japan's Akita

Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala is considering investing as much as USD 6.3 billion (about JPY 1 trillion) to build a 500-megawatt AI data centre in Akita Prefecture, Japan, according to a person familiar with the matter (Japan Times).

At 500 MW, the project would exceed the capacity of any existing data centre in Japan and would rank among the largest foreign sovereign-capital commitments to Japanese AI infrastructure to date (Taipei Times).

Mubadala is one of the founding partners of MGX, the Abu Dhabi AI investment vehicle it created with G42. MGX and BlackRock completed their roughly USD 40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centers the prior month, part of a broader Gulf capital push into AI infrastructure (Middle East AI News).

A consortium of Japanese companies would likely handle construction and related infrastructure, with foreign and domestic co-investors potentially joining. Total ecosystem investment, including suppliers and co-locating tenants, could reach JPY 2 trillion (CryptoBriefing).

Mubadala declined to comment. Japan's Nikkei had earlier reported that the UAE was planning a data centre in Akita. Japan's strategic plan projects JPY 32.7 trillion in combined public and private investment in cloud and data centre capacity by FY2035 (Telecompaper).

The deal is single-sourced, co-investors are unnamed, and questions remain over Akita's grid power and why the site was chosen over Tokyo or Osaka.