Technology Agenda: Giant AI Move from SoftBank, Chip Crisis and Artificial Intelligence Race

SoftBank Grubu and telecom alt şirketi officially announced their entry into the artificial intelligence processing power rental market by establishing a new company called SB Neo in the Amerika Birleşik Devletleri. In the company's share structure, SoftBank Corp. holds a 51% stake, while SoftBank Grubu will hold a 49% stake, and the business is planned to become operational in the 2027 fiscal year. The new company will offer artificial intelligence chips and cloud services called Neocloud, specifically targeting large cloud service providers. The company is expected to initially start in Texas and reach a massive data center capacity of 10 gigawatts by 2030 in the long term. Bringing every 1 gigawatt portion of this massive capacity to life will require hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment, and partnerships with other companies will be planned to mitigate financial risks.

On the other hand, the global memory chip shortage triggered by the artificial intelligence boom has become a serious political issue. The Uluslararası Yarı İletken Endüstrisi Derneği (SEMI) warned the government in a letter sent to ABD Hazine Bakanı Scott Bessent not to directly intervene in pricing or production capacity. According to SEMI, wrong steps by the government will further exacerbate current supply problems, negatively affecting the production of consumer goods such as laptops, automobiles, and home appliances. Additionally, it was learned that Apple is waiting for approval from the ABD government to purchase some components from Chinese suppliers, and some members of Congress are advocating for forcing chip manufacturers to prioritize customers in their own countries. SEMI argues that if electronic product prices increase, the government should offer tax reductions to consumers rather than directly intervening in the market.

The European semiconductor industry, meanwhile, is currently caught between geopolitical risks stemming from both the ABD and China. A new report financed by the Avrupa Birliği highlights that China's export restrictions on critical minerals and potential conflict risks in the Tayvan Boğazı threaten parts of the supply chain. In addition, it is emphasized that Europe's excessive dependence on ABD technology creates a structural vulnerability and that giant companies like ASML could be affected by potential ABD sanctions. A new bill under consideration by the ABD Kongresi could give Washington the authority to impose export restrictions even on companies in allied countries. Against these risks, the Avrupa Birliği launched the "Yonga Yasası 2.0" (Chips Act 2.0) initiative aimed at increasing local production and is trying to ensure supply chain security by joining the ABD-led Pax Silica initiative.

Competition in artificial intelligence models continues unabated; Chinese companies are rapidly catching up to their ABD rivals with their low-cost models. ABD Başkanı Donald Trump stated that security measures must be taken in artificial intelligence technologies, but excessive limitations that would weaken the ABD's competitive power against China should be avoided. In the same period, two advanced models of Anthropic, which were restricted by the ABD Ticaret Bakanlığı due to national security concerns, were made accessible again after the company took additional security measures. On the other hand, the GLM-5.2 model developed by the Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu attracted the attention of Silicon Valley with its open-weight structure and highly affordable cost. In response to Elon Musk's comments that Chinese models could reach the Anthropic level by 2027, Zhipu executives responded by stating that they won't need to wait that long.

Finally, the world's leading technology giants have moved to the stage of commercially implementing artificial intelligence at the corporate level. Microsoft established a new service division called Microsoft Frontier Company, with a budget of 2,5 billion dollars and an expert staff of 6.000, to help companies integrate artificial intelligence into their daily operations. Amazon's low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite project is preparing to launch its first commercial internet service within this year following the deployment of more than 390 satellites into space. Starting from 15 Eylül, Cloudflare will block artificial intelligence crawlers (AI crawler) by default to protect the rights of content-generating websites and will offer a new commercial compensation system based on content usage. In contrast, Meta CEO'su Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the development pace of the company's artificial intelligence agents (AI agent) has fallen below expectations, stating that they will begin to see the results of their massive 145 billion dollar investment in the coming months.