TOKYO, JAPAN, March 25, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — ai&, a new global AI technology company, today announces its official launch, backed by $50 million in seed funding and more than $2 billion in committed data center capital. The company is building a vertically integrated AI platform from Japan for the global market that unifies data centers, heterogeneous compute, and advanced model services into a single optimized stack. ai& will also establish a state-of-the-art AI lab in Japan to incubate next-generation AI services with initial focus on training localized models.
Founded by David Bennett, former CCO of Tenstorrent and former CEO & President of NEC Personal Computers / Lenovo Japan, and Shimpei Hara, former Technology Executive at Tenstorrent, ai& is designed to become both a global infrastructure powerhouse and a localized AI innovation hub based in Japan.
Key highlights
– $50M seed funding to accelerate buildout across infrastructure, compute, and model services
– $2B in data center capital to support long-term capacity expansion across Japan, US, and Asia
– Ten data center sites in development, including a commitment for a 100MW+ campus over the next three years
– Two of the four established data centers are currently operational, providing hardware and services to a select group of design partners using equipment from AMD, NVIDIA, and Tenstorrent.
– Deployment of a highly optimized inference platform supporting the industry’s latest and most advanced AI models, accessible via an OpenAI-compatible API for easy integration from enterprises and developers
– Establishment of a state-of-the-art AI lab in Japan to incubate next-generation AI services with initial focus on training localized models and fostering young AI talent
Why it matters
Enterprise demand for sovereign and secure AI continues to rise, and Japan remains one of the most underleveraged markets for AI infrastructure and services. ai& is purpose-built to help enterprises and developers deploy AI with greater control, stronger security posture, and an optimized cost and performance profile by integrating critical layers of the stack. ai& is where AI meets infrastructure, sovereignty, and scale — all ideas, connected.
How it works
ai& differentiates itself by building from the bottom up. In practice, this means frontier AI models running on ai&-owned hardware, delivering faster inference and lower costs than providers who depend on third-party compute. The company is developing modular data center architecture paired with heterogeneous cloud infrastructure capable of running AI models on large-scale disaggregated systems from multiple hardware vendors. By integrating data centers directly with compute, model, and AI services, ai& aims to deliver performance optimizations and lower costs compared to providers that manage only one layer of the value chain. The AI lab will also accelerate the development of production-grade localized AI models and services.
“We’re building the data center that actually owns the full stack. There is a clear need among enterprises and developers for sovereign and secure AI. We believe Japan is uniquely positioned to build and serve these needs,” said David Bennett, CEO of ai&. “By owning and optimizing the stack end to end — from data centers and heterogeneous compute to models and services — our customers get better performance, better economics, and less friction. We intend to prove the model first in Japan and expand across APAC, Europe, and the Middle East, with our first US data center coming online within the next two years.”
Unlike many AI platforms that rely on a single vendor stack, ai& is designed around heterogeneous compute. The platform integrates hardware from multiple leading semiconductor companies including AMD, NVIDIA, and Tenstorrent, allowing workloads to be optimized across different architectures for performance, efficiency, and cost.
“Japan has world-class engineering talent and a deep enterprise ecosystem that has been waiting for an AI infrastructure platform built specifically for its needs,” said Shimpei Hara, Co-Founder of ai&. “We are building that platform here, and we are building it to last.”
With the launch of ai&, Unsung Fields, Inc., a Japan-based data center cloud company, has transitioned its infrastructure and operations into the ai& platform and is no longer an independent entity.
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