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As the AI race heats up, OpenAI is going all in to strengthen its international play. The Sam Altman-led company has announced it is expanding into Asia with a new office in Tokyo, Japan, set to be spearheaded by Tadao Nagasaki, the former President of AWS Japan.
While the office has just been announced, OpenAI has been working with Japanese companies for quite some time now. With a dedicated team on the ground now, the lab plans to build on these relationships and navigate local regulatory challenges better.
OpenAI also said it is releasing a custom version of GPT-4, which has been tuned specifically for the Japanese language. This marks the entry of another model customized for a specific region — a major trend among emergent AI startups in recent months.
Tech companies in other regions, including South Korea, India, Finland and China, have also started training proprietary models with a focus on local languages and cultural contexts.
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OpenAI Japan to serve local needs
With the new Tokyo office and the custom version of GPT-4, OpenAI is eyeing close collaboration with local communities, businesses and governments to establish itself in the market.
In a blog post published today, the lab said Nagasaki, who was at AWS for 12 years, will lead OpenAI Japan’s commercial and market engagement efforts and help build a local team to advance global affairs, go-to-market, communications, operations and other functions.
This team will eventually work with all stakeholders to help them develop safe AI solutions with OpenAI’s models for serving “Japan’s unique needs and to unlock new opportunities.”
OpenAI has been working with several big brands and institutions from Japan, including Rakuten, Toyota and Daiken. However, capturing local needs means understanding local cultural nuances and linguistic contexts. This is where the new Japanese-tuned GPT-4 will come in.
Open AI says the custom model, which is already accessible to certain local businesses like Speak (an English learning app), offers improved performance in translating and summarizing Japanese text. On top of that, it also offers cost benefits and operates up to three times faster than GPT-4 Turbo, making it a suitable choice for diverse local needs.
While it remains to be seen how the model performs (OpenAI says it will become broadly available via API in the coming months), the move to focus on local needs with a custom model is expected to draw some business, both from existing and new customers.
Even in Japan, OpenAI will have some competition, thanks to Sakana, the AI startup founded by former Google and Stability AI executives to build a highly performant but economical collective intelligence system.
With all this, OpenAI Japan expects to work closely with the Japanese government to understand its perspective on AI and expand its footprint as soon as possible. The collaboration with the government will also help the AI giant better navigate regulatory challenges around the technology.
“As a key global voice on AI policy, the Japanese government chaired the G7 Hiroshima AI Process and worked to implement AI policies that align with its goals for human dignity, diversity and inclusion, and sustainable societies, while helping Japan realize solutions to its rural depopulation and labor shortage. We look forward to contributing to the local ecosystem, while exploring how AI can help with these societal challenges in the region,” the company wrote its blog post.
This work will also be crucial as the company continues to advance its models, moving closer to building artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Microsoft is already doubling down on Japan
As OpenAI hires talent and sets up a base in Japan, it will also have the support of its biggest investor – Microsoft. Recently, the Satya Nadella-led tech giant announced plans to invest $2.9 billion in the region over the next two years to increase its hyperscale cloud computing and AI infrastructure.
This simultaneous expansion will give local companies everything they need to build AI solutions, right from the models to the infrastructure needed for training.
Separately, Microsoft and OpenAI have also been reported to be working on a $100 billion-worth “Stargate” AI supercomputer.
