SoftBank Plans GWh Battery Factory in Osaka by 2028

SoftBank Corp, the mobile services arm of SoftBank Group, announced plans Monday to establish a battery manufacturing business at its facility in Sakai, Osaka, targeting gigawatt-hour scale production by the fiscal year ending March 2028.

The initiative centers on a 440,000-square-meter former Sharp LCD panel factory, acquired for approximately 100 billion yen last March. SoftBank is converting the site into a hub that includes an AI data center with initial 150-megawatt capacity, expandable beyond 400 megawatts, alongside battery production under the GX Factory banner and AI hardware manufacturing via the AX Factory. Production of battery cells and energy storage systems will begin in the fiscal year starting April 2027, with the company aiming for annual revenue exceeding 100 billion yen from the battery unit by fiscal 2030.

SoftBank is partnering with two South Korean firms: Cosmos Lab, which specializes in zinc-halogen battery cells using pure-water electrolytes to eliminate fire risks associated with lithium-ion batteries, and DeltaX, which provides designs for high-density energy storage systems optimized for AI workloads. The zinc-halogen technology offers comparable or...