Top Message

Realizing a
sustainable society

Guided by the corporate philosophy "Information Revolution — Happiness for everyone," SoftBank Corp. regards realizing a sustainable society as one of its most essential management issues, identifying six material issues with which it must engage. These material issues are selected to connect our corporate philosophy and our "Beyond Carrier" growth strategy, and through the concept of "a world where all things, information and minds are connected," we are determined to achieve group-wide business growth by resolving them, enhancing our corporate value and contributing to the realization of a sustainable world.

Building next-generation
social infrastructure
for a society
that coexists with AI

We announced our long-term vision of providing next-generation social infrastructure essential to the development of a digital society in May 2023. We stand at the advent of a society where people coexist with AI. Through the introduction of AI text generators, multimodal AI, AI video generators and other such models, we suddenly find ourselves in close proximity to AI, which is poised to further permeate everyday society. In a society that coexists with AI, a large amount of data is generated and undergoes heavy processing, consuming a vast amount of electricity. The next-generation social infrastructure that we are building is designed to meet the massive data processing and energy demands created by AI, and we believe it will become an indispensable foundation supporting people's lives in the future. The core of this initiative is the development of distributed AI data centers. By expanding beyond the current concentration of data centers in the Tokyo metropolitan and Kansai regions and establishing them nationwide, we can effectively decentralize data processing and balance energy consumption.
As we build and develop the important infrastructure to support a society that coexists with AI, we must also respond to new risks. Depending on how it is used, AI may lead toward discriminatory evaluation and selection. I believe proactive efforts must be taken to address such anticipated ethical risks. Since 2020, we have been actively engaged in AI governance through the Beyond AI Institute by conducting research on AI ethics and formulating AI ethics policies in collaboration with the University of Tokyo. To further strengthen such measures, we established our AI Governance Committee, whose membership includes outside experts, in April 2024. By leveraging the diverse perspectives and knowledge of these outside experts, our objective is to realize highly effective AI governance while creating AI governance that continuously improves upon itself. Thus, we are advancing our capacity to respond to risks.

Environmental initiatives

We believe that contributing to decarbonization across society through business activities and corporate activities is our duty as a company. We want to bring group-wide net GHG emissions from business activities, including those of our partner companies (Scope 3), to zero by 2050. To achieve net zero, we aim to effectively switch 100% of our energy consumption to renewable energy^*1 (with at least 50% derived from renewable power generation) by FY2030. In May 2023, we announced that we had signed long-term, large-scale renewable energy procurement contracts with power producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In July 2025, we also announced the "forest conservation support project for prefectures nationwide," a program that will support forest conservation activities over 15 years from 2025 to 2040 by donating more than ¥4 billion in total to 47 prefectures and municipalities^*2 through Japan's corporate version of the hometown tax donation system. Furthermore, in collaboration with our Group companies, we launched "NatureBank," a consumer participation tree-planting program. The program covers 16 eco-actions, such as the use of services provided by us and our Group companies, visualizing and encouraging consumers' daily eco-friendly behaviors. Based on the amount of CO2 emissions reduced through these actions, we will plant trees that absorb an equivalent amount of CO2. We will continue to make steady efforts toward realizing a decarbonized society.

[Notes]

1. *1
   Including the use of non-fossil certificates designated as renewable energy.
2. *2
   46 prefectures and Hachioji City, Tokyo.

In closing

SoftBank Corp. has promoted various initiatives to realize a sustainable society and enhance our corporate value. As a result, we were selected for inclusion in the Dow Jones Best-in-Class World Index, one of the world's leading ESG indices, for three consecutive years (2022-2024). In Japan, we became the first company in history to win the Nikkei SDGs Management Grand Prize for two consecutive years and to be inducted into its Hall of Fame as a Prime Seat company. We will continue to address social issues and work toward realizing a sustainable society so that we can meet the expectations of our stakeholders and become the company most needed by people and society.