Asia Tech Wire (June 3) -- Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp will partner with Japanese telecom giant KDDI to transform a display manufacturing plant it plans to shut down into a joint venture AI data center.

The center will use Nvidia Blackwell GPUs for its servers.

Sharp announced last month that Sakai Display Products Corporation (SDP), a wholly owned subsidiary that produces large LCD panels, would completely discontinue production by the end of September at the latest.

While Sharp is the only domestic producer of TV panels in Japan, with the shutdown of SDP, domestic production of TV panels in Japan will come to an end.

Hon Hai Chairman Young Liu, speaking as a representative of Sharp's largest shareholder last month, said that SDP will undergo a transformation into an artificial intelligence AI data center and work together to promote Sharp's goal of asset-lightening.