SoftBank Corp. Posts Record Results, Plots Own Battery Factory to Feed AI Energy Hunger

Japan's SoftBank Corp posts record revenue of ¥7.04 trillion, fueled by fintech PayPay, as it builds a zinc-halogen battery plant to power AI data centers and targets ¥9 trillion revenue by 2030.

Japan’s telecom heavyweight SoftBank Corp. is remaking itself in the image of the artificial intelligence age. The operator posted a record profit last fiscal year, and it is pouring a chunk of that cash into an in-house battery plant designed to power the voracious energy needs of its AI data centers.

Revenue climbed 7.6 percent to 7.04 trillion yen, a new high, while operating profit hit 1.04 trillion yen. Net income rose 4.7 percent to 550.8 billion yen. The engine behind the surge was fintech arm PayPay, which more than doubled its operating profit from the prior year. Two other segments — Enterprise and Distribution — each broke through the 1-trillion-yen revenue barrier for the first time.

SoftBank is now channelling that financial momentum into a strategic shift it calls “Activate AI for Society.” The centrepiece is a battery cell production line carved out of a former Sharp LCD panel factory on a 440,000-square-metre site in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. The facility, dubbed the GX Factory, is set to start operations in the next fiscal year. The company is teaming up with South Korean partners Cosmos Lab and AI firm DeltaX to produce zinc-halogen batteries, a chemistry touted for its safety profile.

Initial annual capacity will be one gigawatt-hour, with plans to scale up to multiple gigawatt-hours. The batteries are intended primarily to power SoftBank’s own data centres, but the company also intends to sell them to factories and households. Management has set a revenue target of more than 100 billion yen — roughly $638 million — from this unit by 2030.

The move is part of a broader AI infrastructure push that includes participation in the multi-billion-dollar “Stargate” initiative. However, the spending spree comes against a heavy debt load: the broader SoftBank group carries around $135 billion in liabilities. For SoftBank Corp., the battery gambit also marks a deeper shift from being a pure investor to an operator of physical infrastructure.

Shareholders are being rewarded for the strategy. The board has proposed a dividend of 8.6 yen per share for the past year, with an increase to 8.8 yen pencilled in for the coming year. The group’s longer-term ambitions are equally clear: it aims to reach 9 trillion yen in revenue and 1.7 trillion yen in operating profit by 2030, betting that owning the power storage behind AI will be as valuable as the algorithms themselves.