Japan Firms to Get Financial Help for AI Data Prep; Government Seeks to Boost Performance of Domestic AI

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:32 JST, December 29, 2025

The economy ministry will provide financial support for domestic companies’ efforts to process their vast amount of data for machine learning.

Massive amounts of training data need to be pre-processed to improve the accuracy of artificial intelligence. The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry has focused particularly on the data possessed by Japan’s strong manufacturing sector, believing that enhancing the performance of domestically developed AI will strengthen the nation’s product competitiveness and productivity.

The processed data is expected to be used to train domestically developed AI, in which the ministry plans to invest ¥1 trillion over five years from fiscal 2026.

Manufacturers possess vast amounts of information, including data generated during production processes and records of the operating conditions of automobiles and equipment. This is considered “Japan’s most critical resource for AI development and implementation,” a ministry official said.

Such raw data need to be pre-processed into data with fewer errors and inconsistencies to make it easier for AI to learn from it. The government will subsidize the costs of this preparation work — specifically, it will use a portion of the about ¥150 billion allocated in the fiscal 2025 supplementary budget for projects to strengthen AI development capabilities.

AI developers have traditionally used publicly available internet data for training. This approach is advancing rapidly, with predictions suggesting that online data sources could be depleted as early as 2026. Meanwhile, an estimated 60% of the world’s data is held internally by companies, with the majority still unused for training.

Consequently, AI developers have begun negotiating with businesses to request the provision of data. Major Japanese manufacturers are being approached by overseas AI firms, and in China, advanced factories that utilize data and AI have been developed.

The ministry has decided that Japan is at risk of falling behind in the global data race unless it takes action.

AI is expected to play a pivotal role across various fields, including autonomous driving for vehicles and robots, and improving efficiency on factory production lines. It is believed that Japan can create a virtuous cycle by leveraging corporate data to enhance AI performance and strengthen industrial competitiveness.