Japan is preparing to launch a $140 billion investment initiative, leveraging its powerful natural gas trading companies to accelerate data center construction and strive to become a leading global AI infrastructure hub.

Dell and JERA, the world's largest natural gas trader, along with a third company, reached an agreement on Thursday to build a $15 billion, 400-megawatt data center near Tokyo. The project is being financed by Apollo.

JERA Global CEO Yukio Kani said in an interview that the three companies plan to build 3 to 4 gigawatts of AI data centers and accompanying gas-fired power generation infrastructure within five years. "The core principle is to achieve power supply assurance quickly," he said.

The company can trade 35 million tons of liquefied natural gas annually, sufficient to supply fuel to power plants. He estimates that building 1 gigawatt of related infrastructure requires an investment of $350 billion to $450 billion, which implies a total investment of $140 billion to complete the above-scale infrastructure construction.

The three partners also include UK-based AI infrastructure service provider Rhaelm. The three parties plan to promote standardization of data center and power infrastructure construction to accelerate development progress and reduce costs. The companies may also build data centers and power stations outside Japan.

The $15 billion data center and power station is located in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo and is expected to begin operations around 2028, without connecting to the public grid.

Japan has major data center operators such as NTT Data and SoftBank, and Blackstone Group also plans to invest $30 billion in related businesses in Japan over the next few years.

However, Japan's installed data center capacity still lags far behind. A report this year from the International Data Center Management Association shows that US data centers consume 29.2 gigawatts of electricity, accounting for 43% of global data center power consumption, while Japan accounts for only 1.7 gigawatts.

As part of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's strategic key industry investment plan, the Japanese government aims to achieve 32.7 trillion yen ($206 billion) in public-private investment in cloud computing and data center infrastructure by 2035.