{"id":10120,"date":"2026-07-02T13:05:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?p=10120"},"modified":"2026-07-02T12:29:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T16:29:17","slug":"softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/","title":{"rendered":"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips"},"content":{"rendered":"

SoftBank<\/a> built its telecom business on phone bills. Now, it wants to run on gigawatts, and it’s chasing a spot in the AI cloud market to do it.<\/p>\n

SoftBank Group and its mobile carrier arm, SoftBank Corp., are launching a new venture called SB Neo Inc. this month, aiming to rent out AI cloud computing<\/a> to US companies starting next fiscal year. Specifically, the goal, according to telecom unit head Junichi Miyakawa, is to eventually supply 10 gigawatts of data center capacity by around 2030, enough cloud infrastructure for large-scale AI training and inference work.<\/p>\n

The numbers behind this bet are striking. Indeed, people familiar with the plan say the neocloud business<\/a> could triple or quadruple SoftBank Corp.’s annual operating income, pushing it toward \u00a53 trillion to \u00a54 trillion, or roughly $18.5 billion to $25 billion. As a result, Miyakawa called it a shot at profit “on a different order of magnitude,” and he described the US cloud launch as something close to a second founding for the company.<\/p>\n

That’s a big claim for a business that has spent decades selling phone plans in Japan, not cloud infrastructure. Still, it tracks with where Masayoshi Son’s attention has been for a while now. For instance, his parent company has already committed close to $65 billion to OpenAI, which gives the new cloud venture a plausible first customer.<\/p>\n

The catch, however, is timing. Neoclouds, the term for smaller providers renting out AI-specific cloud capacity, have become a crowded field fast. CoreWeave and Nebius<\/a> are already established players in this space, and meanwhile, the traditional cloud giants, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, sell the same kind of access at massive scale. Meta is reportedly working on something similar too, so SoftBank is arriving late to a cloud market that’s filling up quickly.<\/p>\n

Where SoftBank thinks it has room to compete, though, is power. Miyakawa pointed to the company’s access to gas-fired generation as an advantage over cloud rivals scrambling to secure electricity for their facilities. After all, that’s the real bottleneck in this industry right now, more than chips or cloud software.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, SoftBank is already building toward a $500 billion data center<\/a> project in Ohio and expanding cloud campuses in Hokkaido and Osaka, so the ambition, at least, isn’t in question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SoftBank built its telecom business on phone bills. Now, it wants to run on gigawatts, and it’s chasing a spot in the AI cloud market to do it. SoftBank Group and its mobile carrier arm, SoftBank Corp., are launching a new venture called SB Neo Inc. this month, aiming to rent out AI cloud computing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6151,7232,7231,7230,7233],"class_list":["post-10120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ai-cloud-computing","tag-neocloud-market","tag-sb-neo-inc","tag-softbank-ai-cloud","tag-softbank-data-center-strategy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips - Web Hosting News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips - Web Hosting News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"SoftBank built its telecom business on phone bills. Now, it wants to run on gigawatts, and it’s chasing a spot in the AI cloud market to do it. SoftBank Group and its mobile carrier arm, SoftBank Corp., are launching a new venture called SB Neo Inc. this month, aiming to rent out AI cloud computing […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Web Hosting News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-02T17:05:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-07-02T16:29:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Justine Juyad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Justine Juyad\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/\",\"name\":\"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips - Web Hosting News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-02T17:05:33+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-07-02T16:29:17+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/3a1732732b90f8c57c2a0ec68d3c49e3\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/\",\"name\":\"Web Hosting News\",\"description\":\"Cloud and web hosting industry daily news\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/3a1732732b90f8c57c2a0ec68d3c49e3\",\"name\":\"Justine Juyad\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/96df33d01870f85226adf8492251fbefe00bc349b10bb7679b094f3fa086999c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/96df33d01870f85226adf8492251fbefe00bc349b10bb7679b094f3fa086999c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Justine Juyad\"},\"description\":\"HostingDiscussion.com senior reporter\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/author\/justine-juyad\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips - Web Hosting News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips - Web Hosting News","og_description":"SoftBank built its telecom business on phone bills. Now, it wants to run on gigawatts, and it’s chasing a spot in the AI cloud market to do it. SoftBank Group and its mobile carrier arm, SoftBank Corp., are launching a new venture called SB Neo Inc. this month, aiming to rent out AI cloud computing […]","og_url":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/","og_site_name":"Web Hosting News","article_published_time":"2026-07-02T17:05:33+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-07-02T16:29:17+00:00","author":"Justine Juyad","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Justine Juyad","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/","url":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/","name":"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips - Web Hosting News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-07-02T17:05:33+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-02T16:29:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/3a1732732b90f8c57c2a0ec68d3c49e3"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/softbank-bets-its-cloud-future-on-raw-power-not-chips\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"SoftBank bets its cloud future on raw power, not chips"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/","name":"Web Hosting News","description":"Cloud and web hosting industry daily news","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/3a1732732b90f8c57c2a0ec68d3c49e3","name":"Justine Juyad","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/96df33d01870f85226adf8492251fbefe00bc349b10bb7679b094f3fa086999c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/96df33d01870f85226adf8492251fbefe00bc349b10bb7679b094f3fa086999c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Justine Juyad"},"description":"HostingDiscussion.com senior reporter","sameAs":["https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/"],"url":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/author\/justine-juyad\/"}]}},"views":109,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10121,"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10120\/revisions\/10121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}