Runpod and RUTILEA Partner to Expand AI Compute in Asia, with RUTILEA as Exclusive Japan Partner for Data Center Onboarding

RUTILEA and Runpod to expand AI compute capacity in Asia for Runpod customers worldwide, starting with data centers in Japan

RUTILEA, a Japanese AI infrastructure company, announced a strategic partnership with Runpod, the AI Developer Cloud, to expand AI compute capacity in Asia for Runpod’s customers around the world, starting in Japan. Under the partnership, RUTILEA is Runpod’s exclusive partner in Japan for sourcing and onboarding data center capacity onto the Runpod platform.

The growing use of AI, including AI agents, is driving up demand for compute worldwide. That demand is spreading across regions, and companies increasingly want compute that runs close to their users and their data. Runpod is used by developers in 186 countries and lets them choose the data centers their workloads run in. To give its global customers more capacity in Asia, Runpod is expanding its compute supply in the region, starting with Japan.

Japan has a deep base of data center facilities, but bringing a facility onto a global developer cloud takes more than installing servers. Network design, hardware, monitoring and day-to-day operations must all meet the standards customers expect. RUTILEA will identify data center operators in Japan, prepare their facilities for the Runpod platform and coordinate onboarding with Runpod’s infrastructure team. New capacity will continue to go through Runpod’s standard review before it goes live, so that capacity in Japan meets the same standards as the rest of the platform.

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The partnership brings together complementary strengths. Runpod brings its AI Developer Cloud and the demand of its global base of developers and enterprise customers. RUTILEA brings its relationships with data center operators in Japan, its experience building and operating GPU data centers in the country, and a base for expanding capacity across Asia.

The companies plan to grow capacity from Japan across Asia over time, giving Runpod customers around the world more options to deploy and run AI workloads in the region, close to the users and data they serve.

“A growing share of the developers building on Runpod need their workloads running in Asia, next to their users and their data, and Japan is where we’re growing first,” said Zhen Lu, CEO and co-founder of Runpod. “RUTILEA knows the data center operators there and has run GPU facilities in Fukushima since 2024. Every facility they bring us goes through the same review as the rest of the platform.”

“Demand for AI compute is growing everywhere, and Japan has the data center infrastructure to meet it,” said Takafumi Yano, CEO of RUTILEA. “By bringing data centers in Japan onto Runpod, we will put that capacity in the hands of developers around the world and make Japan a base of AI compute in Asia for Runpod’s global customers.”