OpenAI arrives in Asia with inaugural Tokyo office
By Carl Samson
OpenAI has opened an office in Japan, marking a significant step in its global expansion efforts.
Key points:
The details:
- OpenAI Japan follows the company’s U.S. and European locations. Tadao Nagasaki, former president of Amazon Web Services in Japan, has been appointed president.
- In a blog post, OpenAI said it chose Japan for its global leadership in technology, strong service culture and embrace of innovation.
- CEO Sam Altman has expressed enthusiasm about forming a long-term partnership with Japan, focusing on government, business and research. In a statement, he highlighted how AI can help improve work:
“We’re excited to be in Japan which has a rich history of people and technology coming together to do more. We believe AI will accelerate work by empowering people to be more creative and productive, while also delivering broad value to current and new industries that have yet to be imagined.”
- As a first step in its long-term commitment, OpenAI is offering local businesses early access to a custom GPT-4 model optimized for Japanese, improving performance in translation and summarization tasks. The cost-effective model reportedly operates three times faster than previous versions.
- Last week, Microsoft announced its plan to invest $2.9 billion to boost its cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Japan over the next two years. This marks the company’s largest investment in its 46-year history in Japan, which also housed its first international office.
What’s next:
- OpenAI plans to scale its operations in Japan, potentially growing the office to 10 to 20 employees by the end of the year.
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