Oracle plans to invest more than $8 billion in Japan over the next decade to meet growing cloud computing and AI infrastructure demands.

The cloud provider said it will expand its operations across Japan, from supporting Japanese engineering teams in addressing digital sovereignty requirements to increasing customer support in its cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka.

The company said it aims to enable governments and businesses to move their mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud.

Toshimitsu Misawa, CEO and member of the board at Oracle Japan, said: “By growing our cloud footprint and providing a team to support sovereign operations in Japan, we are giving our customers and partners the opportunity to innovate with AI and other cloud services while supporting their regulatory and sovereignty requirements.”

Oracle launched its cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Other major cloud providers also have a presence in Japan.

Last year, Oracle announced it would expand 66 of its existing cloud data centers and build 100 new ones globally. The company usually relies on leasing space from third-party providers.

AWS launched a Tokyo region in 2011, with an Osaka region opening in 2021. Google launched its first Japanese region in Tokyo in 2016, with Osaka coming in 2019. Alibaba also has a Tokyo region, launched in 2016.

Microsoft has two Japanese Azure regions - Tokyo and Osaka - that both launched in 2014. Microsoft also announced plans earlier this month to invest $2.9 billion in data centers in Japan, also to address growing AI demand.

Oracle announced in December last year that it had deployed its Oracle database services in the Microsoft Azure East US region’s data centers. This followed the multi-year agreement between the two companies that saw Microsoft use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for AI referencing for its Bing search engine.