Japan Builds a Third AI Pole — Allies with France and India to Escape Digital Colonialism

Tokyo launches AI dialogue frameworks with France, India, Brazil, Malaysia, and the UK — a bid to break free from US-China dependency as its digital minister warns the nation risks becoming an 'AI colony.'

Japan is quietly assembling a third pole in the global AI order.

The Japanese government is creating multiple dialogue frameworks with like-minded nations — France, India, Brazil, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom — to coordinate on artificial intelligence development and reduce what Tokyo sees as dangerous over-reliance on American and Chinese technologies.

The alliance push, reported by Nikkei Asia on June 23, frames AI dependency in stark terms: nations of the Global South risk becoming "digital colonies" of the two AI superpowers. Japan's newly appointed Digital Minister Hisashi Matsumoto had already sounded the alarm earlier this month, warning bluntly that Japan itself "could fall prey to a new form of colonialism in the AI era" if it fails to keep pace.

The move isn't purely diplomatic. Japanese AI startup Preferred Networks recently debuted large language models priced at less than half of OpenAI's rates, signaling that Tokyo wants a homegrown AI stack — not just a seat at someone else's table. SoftBank has also launched a dedicated unit to develop sovereign AI, and Japan is eyeing "continuous" legal reforms to address rapidly escalating AI capabilities.

The France-India-Japan triad is particularly notable. France has pursued an independent AI path through Mistral, while India is building out its own compute infrastructure. Together with Japan, they represent a combined market of over 1.5 billion people — enough scale to matter.

Whether this coalition can produce a credible alternative to the US-China duopoly is an open question. But the message is clear: the middle powers are done waiting for permission.

Sources: Nikkei Asia, The Asahi Shimbun, Nikkei Asia — Preferred Networks