AWS to invest $15 billion in Japan to expand its cloud infra by 2027

Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Friday said it is committing about $15.24 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure in Japan by 2027 in order to meet growing customer demand for its cloud services, including generative AI.

The company made its generative AI service, Amazon Bedrock, available in Japan’s Tokyo region last year while also investing $100 million to start a new global program, dubbed the Generative AI Innovation Center, to help enterprises accelerate the development of generative AI-based applications.

The investment in Japan will be used to expand the cloud service provider’s infrastructure in the country, especially the facilities in Osaka and Tokyo, the company said in a statement.

AWS said it has invested over $8 billion in Japan between 2011 and 2022 in order to grow its data center footprint in the country. Moreover, it claims to have trained over 400,000 individuals in cloud computing skills.

Earlier in 2021, the company had said that the Japanese government selected it to be one of the cloud service providers to support the Government Cloud — the common cloud infrastructure that central government agencies, local governments, and other government organizations use.

The investment in Japan is even larger than the company’s investment in India, which was announced last year.

In May, AWS had committed to investing $12.7 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure in India by 2030. The Indian investment, according to the company, is expected to add $23.3 billion to the country’s GDP by 2030, generating 131,700 jobs annually for the next seven years.

Just five months before announcing the India investment, AWS had launched its second region in Hyderabad and said it was committing $4.4 billion to scale it through 2030.

In May last year, AWS launched a new cloud region in Malaysia and had committed to invest $6 billion in the country over the next 14 years.

Currently, the company has 10 regions in the Asia Pacific region, including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Seoul, Jakarta, Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mainland China.

AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. Each of these 10 regions has at least three Availability Zones.

Globally, AWS has 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic regions. The company has announced plans to build out 12 more Availability Zones and four more regions in Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand.