Japan

OpenAI said on November 3 that two staff used GPT-6 Astra to design a device for talking to Codex, covering the enclosure, circuit board, firmware and interface, in under a week as a side project, with no direct human edits. A contract manufacturer built prototypes in under a month, but the design needed several rounds of revision because Astra did not consistently account for production limits and tolerances. OpenAI also announced a research collaboration with Mazda.

Toyota and Waymo said on October 30 that they will begin testing and validating a fleet of autonomous Toyota bZ4X vehicles in Japan in 2027, with deployment to the UK and other Waymo markets planned for later years. Toyota will assemble the cars and install Waymo's driving hardware at its Takaoka plant. Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov told Reuters the companies will start with right-hand-drive markets. Neither company disclosed fleet size or locations.

The PHP Foundation's executive director told Reuters it has one full-time employee and 14 mostly part-time contractors, called PHP "incredibly under-funded," and said it has no evidence the PHP2Shell flaws were exploited before disclosure or on patched sites. OpenAI's Sam Altman, whose company helped find the flaws, said separately that he no longer thinks "we're going to be able to just patch all the bugs." CISA's exploited-vulnerabilities catalogue still did not list either CVE when checked on October 26.

The Nasdaq fell 2.6% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor index 6.7% on Oct. 22, Reuters reported, as Meta dropped 7% and its credit default swaps hit a record after it announced non-voting shares to help fund AI spending. Nvidia's Jensen Huang told CNBC that neoclouds face a scarcity of capital. On Oct. 23, SK hynix said Solidigm had halted its IPO review, citing capital market conditions, Seoul Economic Daily reported.

NTT Data Group is in final talks to build a data center in Osaka for Anthropic, Nikkei reported on Oct. 13, citing multiple sources. According to Reuters' relay, construction could cost up to 1 trillion yen ($6.3 billion), power intake could reach 500 MW, partial operations could start as early as 2028, and the companies aim to sign by March 31. No deal is signed; NTT declined to comment.

The Financial Times reported on Oct. 9, citing people familiar with the matter, that SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son is seeking to raise up to $100 billion from Gulf investors and has held talks in recent weeks with senior figures, including in the United Arab Emirates. According to the FT, as relayed by Reuters, the money would set up a fund that acquires companies and improves their operations using AI and other advanced technologies. Reuters could not verify the report and SoftBank did not respond. No investor, commitment or timetable has been reported.

Updated Oct. 9, evening: Adventure Inc., which runs the travel booking site Skyticket, said on Oct. 9 that an intrusion from Oct. 2 to Oct. 4 may have exposed about 14.64 million customer records, about 4.13 million of them with hashed member passwords, alongside two smaller, separate incidents. It says no card numbers or passport images leaked. The company has not said who was behind it or how the admin functions were abused, and nothing published shows AI was used. Earlier on Oct. 9, Japan's National Cybersecurity Office asked businesses holding large volumes of personal data to tighten security and treat it as a management issue, citing the misuse of AI among increasingly advanced attack methods; it is a request, not a law.

According to people familiar with a letter to the Japan Book Publishers Association, Nippan Group confirmed its overseas unit Nippan IPS signed a deal with Anthropic in November 2024 and sold it books from December 2024 to December 2025. Nippan said the unit asked about purpose but was not aware the purchases were for AI training; volumes and amounts were undisclosed. An internal Anthropic document in a US lawsuit lists 'Nippan Japan' under Project Panama. No Anthropic comment was found in the wire reports. Buying books is lawful; the dispute is about publishers' consent and use.

At the STS Forum in Kyoto on Oct. 4, OSTP Director Michael Kratsios led the United States and 16 other countries — including Japan, Korea, the UK, Germany, Italy, Singapore and the UAE, not China — in endorsing the Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science, which calls for integrating “super intelligence” into research and widening researcher access to SI tools, data, compute and facilities. Speaking alongside Kratsios, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son said superintelligence in the wrong hands could become “super dangerous,” Bloomberg reported via The Japan Times. TNW notes the declaration says countries “endeavour” to act, while the White House release says they “pledged” and “committed.”

SoftBank Group executed the third and final $10 billion tranche of its February-announced OpenAI follow-on via Vision Fund 2 on October 1 (Japan time), completing $30 billion and bringing cumulative OpenAI investment to $64.6 billion (~13% ownership). Funded from September 24 foreign-currency senior notes — not bridge debt — SoftBank also canceled the remaining $10 billion undrawn under its March $40 billion bridge as of September 30.

Google shipped Gemini 3.8 Live and Live Extended Thinking for production voice agents. Google says Extended Thinking tops Artificial Analysis’ Speech-to-Speech Quality Index at 82.6; API audio is $0.005/min in and $0.018/min out. SynthID on all generated audio.

Apple said on October 26 that, with its 27.2 software updates, Siri AI is now available in beta in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, in addition to English. Apple says Chinese (traditional), Norwegian, Turkish and Vietnamese are coming by the end of the year, that Siri AI is currently unavailable in the EU on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS, and that server-based features have daily usage limits, with expanded access to be offered for a fee in the future. Apple has not given a price or a date for the fee.

Nvidia announced a $1.5 billion SB Energy investment and residual-value guarantees capped at $105 billion for an initial 4.25 IT-GW at Ohio’s PORTS-Pike campus. OpenAI signed for about 8 IT-GW under 20-year leases; construction, financing and infrastructure conditions remain.

Reuters, citing The Information, reported Nvidia talks to invest up to $3B in SB Energy alongside discussions over about $100B in credit support for an Ohio OpenAI campus. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Ads to the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea for Free and Go adults. Plus through Education stay ad-free; ads remain labeled, separated from answers, and do not change model responses. International inventory is how Free-tier scale funds access without raising every subscription.