Preferred Networks (PFN), Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) and Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) have on Monday announced that the three companies will establish their joint venture Preferred Computing Infrastructure, Inc. (PFCI) in January 2025.
Scheduled to begin operations in early 2026, PFCI will primarily provide, operate and support customers of Preferred Computing Platform™ (PFCP™), an AI cloud computing service powered by PFN’s low-power AI processor in the MN-Core™ series, the trio said in a statement.
According to the statement, PFN will holds 51 percent stake in PFCI, while MC and IIJ will hold 39 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
PFCI will build a highly efficient computing infrastructure powered by the energy-efficient MN-Core series and stably provide computing power to meet the rapidly growing demand for AI through its AI cloud computing service PFCP.
At PFCI, PFN will develop the MN-Core series and provide technical support while MC will leverage its network for business strategies and marketing.
PFCI will build the computing infrastructure in the NRT12 datacenter operated by MC group company MC Digital Realty, Inc., where the joint venture will implement IIJ’s technological expertise for the maintenance and operation to ensure robust and stable service quality.
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Going forward, PFCI will also expand its business scope to include high-performance computing for complex modeling and simulation, and support for building customers’ own large language models, as well as provision of computing power for AI.
It is noted that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, especially generative AI, are being rapidly adopted across various domains and expected to continue evolving as basic infrastructure for society and industries.
Development and implementation of such AI technologies require a vast amount of computing power that can be continuously and stably expanded as the demand grows.
The biggest issues resulting from the growing computing power, however, are the increasing power consumption and heat.
This makes it critical for sustainable development of AI to drastically improve computing performance per watt and densification of arithmetic devices in datacenter infrastructure.
PFN is a firm develops advanced software and hardware technologies in a vertically integrated approach, covering the entire AI value chain from chips, supercomputers, generative AI foundation models to solution and products.
Founded in 2014 in Tokyo, PFN has applied its technologies to a range of industries including manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, entertainment and education.
PFN had in October 2024 launched PFCP™. Since December 2024, PFN has also been providing PLaMo™, a large language model fully developed from scratch by PFN Group focused on high Japanese-language performance.
Meanwhile, MC develops diversified businesses in a wide range of industries through its eight groups: environmental energy, materials solution, mineral resources, urban development and infrastructure, mobility, food industry, smart-life creation, and power solution.
SOURCE: Technode
