GPU cloud company Ubitus has received funding from the University of Tokyo's investment wing, UTokyo Innovation Platform.
Terms of the deal have not been shared, nor the value of the investment.
UTokyo Innovation is the venture investment arm of the University of Tokyo. Ubitus has an ongoing relationship with the university through which it develops LLMs optimized for the Japanese market.
Ubitus will use the funding to expand its GPU cloud and data center business in Japan to be able to handle petabyte-scale workloads. The data centers will also host Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.
The company said that, due to the higher industrial electricity rates in Japan and space constraints, the company is prioritizing energy-efficient facilities for its data centers and is exploring establishing a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to manage its data center assets.
Ubitus currently operates two data centers in Japan, in Tokyo and Osaka. In October 2024, reports emerged that Ubitus was looking to build a data center nearby to a nuclear power plant in Japan. CEO Wesley Kyo said that the company would be looking for an initial 2-3MW of power for the new data center, with the potential to scale up to 50MW.
Launched in 2012, Ubitus specializes in cloud and AI services and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company originally focused on cloud gaming solutions but pivoted to also focus on AI in 2024.
In partnership with Foxlink, Ubitus previously established Ubilink.AI Co. Ltd - a supercomputer located in Taipei, Taiwan, that ranked 31st in the Top500's November 2024 list.
The company also partners with cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Azure, to give customers access to advanced GPU resources, and is a member of the Nvidia Connect program.
