Japanese AI startup Rutilea has completed work on a new data center in Fukushima.

"We announce that AI Fukushima Inc. has completed its data center construction in Fukushima, Japan," the company said this week.

AI Fukushima Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rutilea. The facility is located in Okuma-machi, Fubata-gun, Fukushima Prefecture.

The completion ceremony, held on September 18, 2024, was attended by members of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Fukushima Prefectural Government, the town of Okuma, and others.

The facility totals around 1,000 square meters (10,765 sq ft) and has seen around 2 billion yen ($14m) invested.

Founded in 2018, Rutilea is developing an AI cloud service. It secured $60 million in Series D and debt financing in August, after raising $4.1m in Series C funding last year.

The company said the new data center is equipped with hundreds of Nvidia H100 GPUs, and is supported by a subsidy from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

Data centers come to Fukushima

The government is actively trying to lure more industry to Okuma and other areas of Fukushima impacted by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, leading to a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

A second 2,000 sqm (21,525 sq ft) facility from Rutilea is due live in Q1 2025, while Tokyo game developer Orenda World is aiming to open a 2,200 sqm (23,680 sq ft) data center in the nearby village of Katsurao next summer.

Pixel Companyz, a Tokyo-based systems developer, is also developing a 5,500 sqm (59,200 sq ft) data center in Okuma, with completion scheduled for Q1 2025. Pixel also offers containerized data center solutions equipped with GPUs in partnership with Supermicro.