KDDI and newmo Form Capital Alliance for Self-Driving Taxis

From Sakai to the rest of Japan

Beyond the Sakai launch, the three companies will look at linking the autonomous taxi operation functions developed and tested there with KDDI Smart Mobility's AI on-demand transport and its self-driving buses and shuttles. The idea is to offer these functions to regional transport operators across the country. Longer term, they want to create new services with KDDI group's communications, finance and retail businesses and other industries.

KDDI and KDDI Smart Mobility already take part in the Sakai City Self-Driving Taxi Implementation Consortium, for which newmo acts as secretariat. newmo has used KDDI's AI computing platform to train its self-driving AI models. KDDI calls Sakai a "launch base for AI implementation" and sees the city as the starting point for faster commercialization and rollout elsewhere.

What KDDI will provide

KDDI managing officer Tomohiko Katsuki said at the company's second-quarter earnings briefing that KDDI will first support trials in Sakai, supplying GPUs located in the city as computing resources for newmo, along with a mobile control center for remote support. He noted that newmo has acquired many taxi companies through M&A and expanded to places such as Kanagawa, Karuizawa and Okinawa, and that the partners will work to spread technology pre-trained in Sakai nationwide.

KDDI President Koji Matsuda described the effort as a challenge of extending the company's computing and connectivity into the mobility field.