Investment conglomerate SoftBank has launched a Japan-based battery business in a bid to cash in on increasing demand for systems to power energy hungry AI systems at home and overseas.
The Japanese multinational said on May 11 it will work with partners to develop and manufacture zinc-halogen battery tech and BESS products.
SoftBank aims to achieve annual revenue of more than JPY100 billion ($637 million) for its domestic battery business within the next few years.
SoftBank’s AI Data Center, under development on the former Sharp Corporation factory site in Osaka Prefecture, will serve as the core hub to host the battery unit’s new ‘AX’ and ‘GX’ plants.
AX will serve as a hub for AI data center operations and AI infrastructure hardware manufacturing, while GX will be the manufacturing hub for next-gen batteries, solar panels, and related products.
Manufacturing will start at GX from the end of March 2028, with the aim of achieving mass production on a gigawatt-hour-per-year scale by the following month — the start of Japan’s 2028 fiscal year.
SoftBank’s battery business involves collaborating with two other companies that have expertise in advanced technologies, Cosmos Lab and DeltaX.
Work with Cosmos will include joint development of zinc-halogen batteries that Cosmos says combine high safety and non-flammable characteristics with superior energy storage performance. The batteries use pure water as electrolyte.
By using a halogen-based material for the cathode and zinc for the anode, the batteries will offer charge-discharge characteristics with minimal energy loss and achieve energy efficiency equal to or greater than lithium ion batteries, the partners claim.
Additionally, key raw materials such as halogen and zinc can be procured locally in Japan, helping to strengthen the supply chain.
Mass production of the batteries is expected to start around FY2027.
For BESS systems, DeltaX said it has already achieved a storage capacity of 5.37MWh in a standard containerized lithium ion BESS and aims to achieve comparable or greater capacity with innovative battery cells.
Cell-to-pack technology developed by DeltaX will be used in the partnership and integrated with an energy management system equipped with AI-based power demand forecasting capabilities already developed by SoftBank.
All batteries produced will be used at large-scale AI data centers SoftBank is developing as well as for power grid applications in Japan.
In addition, the batteries will be deployed in industrial and residential BESS systems, with a view to expanding into global markets in the medium term.
