Rakuten’s chief dismissed skeptics who call the Japanese e-commerce pioneer’s mobile foray a mistake and said the telecom arm is central for future growth through artificial intelligence.
A decision to enter Japan’s cutthroat wireless market has saddled Rakuten with four years of losses, weighing on its cash-churning online shopping mall and finance operations. But that mobile arm and its 8 million-plus users help train an AI poised to expand the conglomerate’s business, according to billionaire founder Hiroshi Mikitani.
The amount of exclusive data Rakuten gathers from its users is "extremely powerful,” Mikitani said in an interview. "We have no intent to compete against OpenAI or Google. But we will actively build a more vertically integrated, specialized AI.”
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