SoftBank: Battery Manufacturing for AI Data Centres in Japan
Japanese multinational investment holding company Softbank has launched a battery business aimed at building power infrastructure to support the rapidly increasing demand for electricity, which is being driven by AI.
A report from the IEA projects that electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours, which is slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan.
According to BloombergNEF, Softbank’s facility would be one of the largest facilities in the country if its plans to achieve mass production on a gigawatt-hour-per-year basis are achieved.
Battery cells manufacturing hub
SoftBank plans to use the AI data centre it is developing on a factory site in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture as a core hub to establish its AX Factory and the GX Factory. Its planned operations are to be split across these two ventures.
The AX Factory will serve as a hub for AI data centre operations and AI infrastructure hardware manufacturing, while the GX Factory will serve as a manufacturing hub for next-generation batteries, solar panels and related products.
At the GX Factory, SoftBank plans to begin manufacturing battery cells and energy storage systems at the beginning of 2028, with the aim of achieving mass production in the next few years.
The company says it will promote an end-to-end approach that encompasses development to manufacturing stages to produce battery cells and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) with advanced technologies.
It plans to deploy these batteries at the large-scale AI data centers it is developing.
Softbank says its “innovative battery cells” use a halogen-based material for the cathode and zinc for the anode. The company says the cells offer charge-discharge characteristics with minimal energy loss and achieve energy efficiency equal to or greater than lithium-ion batteries.
SoftBank’s collaborations
In launching its Japan-based battery business, SoftBank is collaborating with two companies in advanced battery-related technologies.
For battery cells, SoftBank began collaborating with COSMOS LAB. In a press release, SoftBank says it is collaborating with COSMOS LAB to jointly develop “innovative battery cells” that combine “highly safe and non-flammable characteristics” with “superior energy storage performance”.
The company says that the zinc-halogen batteries developed by COSMOS LAB use pure water as the electrolyte. Its key feature is its ability to eliminate fire risks associated with the currently dominant lithium-ion batteries.
SoftBank and COSMOS LAB aim to establish technology for mass production at an early stage.
For energy storage systems, SoftBank began collaborating with DeltaX to develop and manufacture an energy storage system that achieves “world-class” energy density.
The company says that DeltaX's Cell Connecting System design and Cell to Pack technology make it possible to maximise the performance of each individual battery cell. The company says it will integrate an energy management system equipped with AI-based power demand forecasting capabilities.
What is a battery energy storage system?
A battery energy storage system is infrastructure centered on battery cells that handle power storage, supply and supply–demand optimisation.
With the expansion of renewable energy adoption and increasing variability in power supply and demand, battery energy storage systems are becoming a critical infrastructure that supports the stable supply of electricity.
They can help to ensure 24/7 uptime and manage the intense power demands from AI and cloud computing.
According to the IEA’s Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions report, BESS capacity is expected to increase from roughly 83 GW in 2023 to more than 1,200 GW by 2030.
