SoftBank CEO says society that coexists with AI is near

SoftBank CEO Junichi Miyakawa says 2025 marked an inflection point for AI, with AI agents moving from experimentation to broad adoption, and expects 2026 to be the year AI becomes embedded in everyday business and life. “I am convinced that a “society that coexists with AI” is on the verge of taking shape in earnest.”

Internally, SoftBank has pushed aggressive AI adoption through its “Crystal Intelligence” initiative, launched in 2025 to reshape corporate operations with AI. Employees have already created more than 2.5 million AI agents, making AI use a standard part of daily work rather than a standalone tool.

On the business side, SoftBank says it is on track to meet the goals of its three-year medium-term plan, including its target of ¥1 trillion in operating income. Consumer brands SoftBank and Y!mobile continue steady growth, while the enterprise segment is posting double-digit gains, driven by demand for AI transformation services such as Gen-AX’s AI-powered contact center solution, X-Ghost.

The company is also positioning itself as a backbone provider for what it calls “Next-generation Social Infrastructure.” This includes AI data centers coming online in Hokkaido and Osaka, a homegrown large language model (Sarashina mini), sovereign cloud services with Oracle, next-generation memory technology, and AI-native mobile networks built around AI-RAN. SoftBank says its AI computing platform now ranks first in Japan for AI performance benchmarks.

Looking ahead, SoftBank expects 2026 to mark the start of large-scale “physical AI,” where AI systems autonomously act in real-world environments through robotics. The company has already begun working with Yaskawa Electric and plans to expand these efforts. “In addition to AI agents, we will see the start of fully-fledged “physical AI” operations in 2026. With the convergence of AI and robotics, physical AI will advance to a stage where AI autonomously makes decisions and takes action in physical spaces, thereby increasing its importance as Next-generation Social Infrastructure. We already started collaborating with Yaskawa Electric Corporation in this field, and we will continue to expand our physical AI initiatives going forward.”