TMTPOST -- Two Japanese tech heavies separately doubled down their artificial intelligence (AI) bets through partnership with major U.S. players in the industry.

Credit：Hitachi

Hitachi Ltd. on Thursday said it signed a “landmark” Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with OpenAI to collaborate on sustainable and plentiful energy to power the AI growth. Touting the MOU as a significant development and a big step toward the future of generative AI, Hitachi said the partnership was reached as its CEO Toshiaki Tokunaga met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Tokyo.

The strategic partnership will involve collaboration on Hitachi’s energy and power grid operations, cooling equipment, storage and its digital solutions hub Lumada, Bloomberg cited a Hitachi representative. The tie-up could boost orders for Hitachi’s energy segment, which accounted for a significant chunk of the company’s earnings last fiscal year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Takeshi Kitaura and Ian Ma. They said in a note that Hitachi’s struggling storage unit could also benefit from the potential for data storage equipment supply.

Fujitsu on Friday announced it expanded its strategic collaboration with Nvidia Corporation to create full-stack AI infrastructure that integrates AI agents. The initiative aims to bolster enterprises' competitive edge through AI, while preserving their autonomy in AI utilization.

The collaboration will focus on co-developing and delivering an AI agent platform tailored for industry-specific AI agents in sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing, and robotics, along with an AI computing infrastructure that integrates Fujitsu’s Monaka central processing unit (CPU) series and Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) via Nvidia NVLink Fusion, enabling more specialized systems than general-purpose architectures can provide.

The combined AI agent platform and computing infrastructure will accelerate the AI industrial revolution with AI agents that continuously learn and improve. This will enable cross-industry, self-evolving, full-stack AI infrastructure, overcoming the limitations of general purpose computing systems. Through this initiative, Fujitsu aims to transform industries starting in Japan, fostering widespread AI adoption that expands globally, thereby enhancing competitiveness across all sectors and contributing to a sustainable society.

“Fujitsu’s strategic collaboration with Nvidia will accelerate AI-driven business transformation in enterprise and government sectors. By combining the cutting-edge technologies of both companies, we will develop and provide full-stack AI infrastructure, starting with sectors such as manufacturing where Japan is a global leader. To further support the expanding needs of AI infrastructure, Fujitsu and Nvidia will expand this partnership in the areas of high-performance computing and quantum," said Fujitsu CEO Takahito Tokita.

“The AI industrial revolution has begun, and we must build the infrastructure to power it — in Japan and across the globe. Fujitsu is a true pioneer in computing and Japan’s trusted leader in supercomputing, quantum research, and enterprise systems. Together, Nvidia and Fujitsu are connecting and extending our ecosystems to forge a powerful partnership for the era of AI,” commented Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Hitachi shares on Friday popped 10.3% and Fujistu rose rose 3.7%, among the biggest contributors to gains on Japan’s broader Topix index, which edged up more than 1.3% the same day.