NTT Data Reportedly Nears Deal With Anthropic for Japan's First Claude-Dedicated Data Center in Osaka

NTT Data Group is close to an agreement with Anthropic to build a new data center in Osaka. Nikkei Asia reported this on Tuesday, citing several sources. If the deal is signed, it will be the first site in Japan built specifically for Anthropic, the maker of the Claude family of models. The publicly available part of the report does not name capacity, amount or timeline. TNW has not independently confirmed the report, and the article contains no official comments from either party.

What we know so far

The report is thin on details, so it is important to separate what is confirmed from speculation. There is a single source, but a credible one: Nikkei Asia regularly learns of major infrastructure deals in Japan ahead of other outlets. The talks are at a final stage, but no contract has been signed.

• Site: a new data center in Osaka.
• Contractor and operator: NTT Data Group.
• Customer: Anthropic, the developer of Claude.
• Status: the deal is close to being finalized but has not been formally announced.
• Distinguishing feature: the first facility in Japan built specifically for Anthropic.
• Not disclosed: capacity in megawatts, type of accelerators, investment size, launch date.

The last item matters most. Without figures for power and hardware, it is impossible to say whether this is a dedicated campus for training models or a site for inference and storing customer data in Japan. For the market, those are fundamentally different stories.

Why Osaka and why NTT Data

Osaka is the second most important data center hub in Japan after Tokyo. Operators and their customers use the region for redundancy: Tokyo and Osaka sit in different seismic and power-risk zones. For a company that needs fault tolerance, it is a sensible choice.

NTT Data is part of the NTT group and works as an integrator and data center operator. It has experience building and running facilities for enterprise and cloud customers, as well as relationships with Japanese banks, the public sector and industry. For Anthropic, such a partner covers several problems at once: land, network connectivity, power supply, permits and a local customer base. Building all of this from scratch with its own team in a foreign country would take a long time.

Why Anthropic wants a site in Japan

Here the analysis begins, rather than the facts. Anthropic has been steadily expanding its compute base through partners: the company previously announced major agreements with Google for TPUs, uses Amazon chips, and announced multibillion-dollar investments in its own infrastructure in the US. A Japanese site fits the same logic: less dependence on other companies' cloud queues and more control over costs.

There is also a practical motive. Japanese banks, insurers and government agencies often require data to be processed inside the country. Local inference addresses data residency and reduces latency for Claude users in the region. Anthropic opened its Tokyo office in 2025, and a data center is a logical continuation of that expansion.

The constraint is also obvious. Japan has expensive electricity, and power-hungry AI campuses run up against limited grid connection availability. How large the Osaka site will be depends precisely on that.

What to watch next

If you use Claude in a Japanese business, watch three things. First, the official announcement: it should include capacity and the hosting model. Second, whether Anthropic will offer in-Japan-only data processing for enterprise customers, and on what terms. Third, the price and availability of new models in the region after launch.

For investors and competitors, the signal is different. If the report is confirmed, NTT Data gains an anchor customer in AI infrastructure, and other labs get a reason to speed up their own deals in Asia. Until there is an official statement, it is reasonable to treat the deal as likely but not closed.