On April 10, the US and Japan unveiled a bilateral agreement featuring a Microsoft partnership with a focus on AI. Microsoft will invest $2.9 billion in Japan over the next two years to bolster AI, cloud computing, and data centers. This investment will also fund digital skills programs for 3 million people, establish a Microsoft Research Lab in Japan, and facilitate joint cybersecurity efforts between the two governments.

Additionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will inject $15 billion into Japan by 2027 to support AI and digital service cloud infrastructure. The agreement includes resource deals such as NVIDIA providing GPUs to Japanese companies like Sakura Internet and Softbank, and Google and Microsoft offering computational resources to Japanese firms working on AI foundation models.

The US and Japan also announced a $110 million joint academic research collaboration to advance AI research and development. This initiative involves universities such as the University of Washington, the University of Tsukuba, Carnegie Mellon University, and Keio University, with funding from NVIDIA, Arm, Amazon, Microsoft, and various Japanese companies.

Furthermore, research partnerships encompass collaborations between NVIDIA and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the US Department of Energy and Japan’s science ministry (MEXT), and Argonne National Laboratory and Japan’s RIKEN.

Regarding AI safety, the agreement outlines efforts to enhance transparency in government content and identify AI-generated content. Both countries pledge to support AI Safety Institutes and collaborate on safety standards, aiming for compatibility between Japan’s AI Guidelines for Business and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.