Rakuten Chief Defends Mobile Foray With Big AI Bet

Rakuten Group Inc.’s chief, Hiroshi Mikitani, dismissed criticism of the company’s entry into Japan’s competitive wireless market, emphasizing the telecom arm's strategic role in its AI-driven future, Shery Ahn and Min Jeong Lee reported for Bloomberg News.

Japan's lag in adopting digital and AI-powered technologies presents a significant opportunity for Rakuten. I Photo: 鋸香具師 Wikimedia Commons

Rakuten’s foray into mobile telecommunications has led to four years of losses, straining its profitable e-commerce and finance operations. However, Mikitani remains optimistic, citing the 8 million-plus users of Rakuten’s mobile network as a vital source of data to fuel its AI initiatives.

“The amount of exclusive data Rakuten gathers from its users is extremely powerful,” he said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “We have no intent to compete against OpenAI or Google. But we will actively build a more vertically integrated, specialized AI.”

Japan's lag in adopting digital and AI-powered technologies presents a significant opportunity for Rakuten.

While other major players such as SoftBank, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, and OpenAI compete to develop Japan’s leading large language model, Rakuten plans to launch an AI assistant designed as a travel and shopping agent.

This move is expected to drive greater user engagement and traffic.