KDDI launches Alliance Park Project and ELYZA Robotics to advance physical AI

KDDI has announced the launch of the ‘Alliance Park Project,’ a strategic initiative designed to create new industries through regional collaboration. Under this project, the company will designate Sakai, Osaka, as a base for AI implementation. This hub will integrate AI model developers, robotics companies, and research institutions to facilitate the social implementation of technologies such as autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots.

To support this, the Osaka-Sakai data center will undergo significant upgrades. By fiscal year 2027, KDDI plans to introduce the NVIDIA HGX Rubin NVL8 platform, which is expected to provide substantial improvements in memory capacity, bandwidth, and computational performance for large-scale AI processing. The center will offer various AI models via API, including Google’s Gemini and Gemma, while also supporting proprietary customer models.

In conjunction with these infrastructure developments, KDDI and ELYZA have established a new company, ELYZA Robotics, to drive the group’s physical AI business. The company focuses on the research and development of robot foundation models, such as Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, and their integration into real-world operations. KDDI aims to invest 30 billion yen in R&D and deploy over 1,000 robots across sectors including retail, logistics, manufacturing, and agriculture by fiscal year 2030.