Rakuten and Ampere collaborate to improve datacentre efficiency for sustainable AI compute

Tokyo, Japan – Rakuten Group, Inc. today announced that it will expand its collaboration with Ampere Computing LLC to reduce power consumption for efficient AI compute. Rakuten will be the first company in Japan to deploy Ampere-based platforms at scale.

Since 2023, Rakuten and Ampere have carried out trials in Rakuten data centers using Ampere hardware. These trials resulted in a 36% energy saving per rack and an 11% reduction in space required per rack^*1 for Rakuten Cloud’s internal cloud container-based^*2 services.

As a global technology company offering services to 1.8 billion members worldwide, Rakuten is carrying out various initiatives aimed at realizing a sustainable society. In December 2019, Rakuten Group, Inc. joined the international RE100 initiative^*3, and in 2024 announced that it had achieved its goal of achieving carbon neutrality, or net-zero greenhouse gas emissions^*4, in its Group-wide business operations^*5 in 2023. For Rakuten, data centers make up a large portion of the company’s total electricity consumption. With demand for servers growing due to the increasing use of AI, energy-efficient data centers will become even more crucial for companies’ sustainability efforts. In 2025, Rakuten plans to scale out its use of Ampere-based platforms in its infrastructure to further improve energy efficiency in its data centers.

Hironori Yoshida, Executive Officer and Vice Director of the Cloud Platform Supervisory Department at Rakuten Group commented, “As demand for compute increases with the adoption of AI, cloud operators need to look into platforms and solutions to realize more sustainable compute. We have been very encouraged by the results of our trials with Ampere and look forward to continuing our collaboration to realize energy-efficient, sustainable data centers.”

Sean Varley, Chief Evangelist, VP of Business Development at Ampere, commented, “Rakuten and Ampere are collaborating to deliver scale-out services^*6 for internal workloads to reduce power usage and increase performance. As AI becomes a volume application, we will look into delivering compelling, cost-effective solutions together.”

With its mission to contribute to society by creating value through innovation and entrepreneurship, Rakuten will continue to work together with its customers, partners, communities, employees and all its stakeholders to realize a sustainable society.

Notes
*1 Comparison of space and power consumption in Rakuten's private cloud container service.
*2 Containers are software packages that contain all the components needed to run an application.
*3 Abbreviation for “Renewable Electricity 100%.” An international collaborative initiative managed by international environment NGO The Climate Group in partnership with the NGO CDP, which promotes the disclosure of climate change information.
*4 Total of scope 1 emissions (direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the company itself) and scope 2 emissions (indirect emissions accompanying the use of heat, steam and electricity supplied by other companies), with third-party verification obtained and estimated in accordance with the GHG Protocol, the international standard for estimating and reporting GHG emissions volume.
*5 By promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption Group-wide for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and offsetting the remaining emissions by using carbon credits and investing in reduction activities.
*6 Increase the number of servers and carry out distributed processing to increase the overall performance of the system.