• Like many telcos, NTT wants to be at the forefront of AI service developments
• It is creating a new AI business that is being spun out of its Smart Data Science Centre
• The focus of the company, dubbed NTT AI-CIX, is ‘linked AI’ for inter-industry developments

In an effort to ensure it’s at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) service developments and remains as relevant as possible to its customer base, especially enterprises and government departments, giant Japanese telco NTT Group is forming a new company, NTT AI-CIX. It will focus on the development of “linked AI” – also known as “chained AI” – “in which various AIs work together across business and industries,” the operator has announced. 

The new business, which is based on digital twin and optimised AI R&D work undertaken by NTT’s Smart Data Science Centre, is set to be formed on 26 August and will be headed up by president and CEO Ippei Shaka. 

“By becoming a company that can carry out everything from research and development to service provision, we have created a new structure that can create new value with a sense of speed even in the midst of the rapid changes surrounding AI,” noted Shaka in a statement posted on the NTT AI-CIX website.   

“One of the purposes of the establishment is to strengthen the deployment of chained AI. Until now, we have been considering a mechanism for linking digital twins in individual businesses and industries to achieve overall optimisation in the form of digital twin computing, but by utilising this idea as chained AI across various businesses and industries, we will accelerate the creation of inter-industry business,” continued the CEO. 

“We will propose new business structures that are not bound by the existing frameworks of society and industry, and realise discontinuous innovation together with our customers. Things, people, and events in the world are intricately related, and we have focused on modelling this. By clarifying the relationships between different tasks and industries, we can achieve cross-sectional overall optimisation. We believe that this will enable us to redefine areas of competition and cooperation and effectively resolve trade-offs. One concrete example of this is the optimisation of the supply chain,” added the CEO. 

Although not yet formally up and running, the new business is already collaborating with retail store management specialist partner Trial Holdings to develop a system that will optimise “store operation efficiency, logistics efficiency, and customer value improvement. In addition, by accelerating the fusion of data from related manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers, and by taking into account the different supply chains and purchasing trends for each product category, we are working to realise optimisation of overall SCM [supply chain management] in the distribution industry,” noted NTT. 

The operator added that it will “utilise the knowledge we have gained from working in various industrial fields (retail, urban development, transportation, electricity, agriculture, healthcare, etc.) to accelerate social implementation together with our customers and partner companies. Furthermore, we will continue to capture industrial and corporate needs and work to create new value and business by utilising linked AI in all industrial fields.”

This isn’t NTT’s only AI activity, of course. Late last year it unveiled Tsuzumi, its own large language model (LLM), to give it a presence in the fast-expanding generative AI (GenAI) sector. In the operator’s report for its fiscal first quarter that ended 30 June, NTT noted that since the commercial launch of Tsuzumi in March this year, it has received more than 400 proposals for the use of the Japanese-language GenAI model and that from November 2024, Tsuzumi will be made available via Microsoft Azure’s AI Studio platform. 

NTT reported revenues of 3.24tn Japanese yen ($22bn) for the fiscal first quarter, up by 4.1% thanks mainly to growth from its global services businesses, but its operating profit dipped by 8.2% to 435.8bn yen ($3bn). The operator ended June with just over 90 million mobile customers in Japan, of which 31.6 million are 5G service users, and 23.69 million domestic fixed broadband customers.    

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV