Fujitsu and AWS Japan unveil generative-AI Business Lab

Fujitsu announced the launch of a Business Creation Lab in collaboration with AWS Japan to drive the next wave of digital transformation across Japan’s retail and service industries. The Lab combines Fujitsu’s deep domain expertise with AWS’ generative AI and cloud capabilities to help companies modernize legacy systems and forge new revenue streams at a fast-moving pace, from proof-of-concept to implementation in just 90 days.

Key Objectives of the Lab

Problem identification on the ground: Fujitsu consultants, engineers, and industry experts will collaborate directly with businesses to uncover latent operational and management issues.

Rapid PoCs to Implementation: The lab promises agile development from ideation to pilot in as little as 90 days and enables clients to rapidly validate generative-AI use cases.

Scalable, standardized solutions: The Lab will combine Fujitsu’s long-term experience with service and retail sector customers and AWS’s broad cloud infrastructure to develop modular solutions that can scale across companies, from EDI/mainframe modernization to API-driven architectures.

Fujitsu claims this initiative goes beyond incremental digitization: it embeds generative AI into key business metrics, unlocking value that can be measured from day one.

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Already, large food distributor Mitsubishi Shokuhin is being cited as a reference customer. Its information systems head highlighted how legacy knowledge-locked away in expert brains-was transferred and standardized through AI-powered chatbots.

Hiroyuki Tsutsumi, Director at the Enterprise Business Unit, AWS Japan, then remarked that the Lab’s founding on the combination of generative AI with deep domain expertise has the potential to catalyze business model innovation not just within retail and distribution but across the wider Japanese industry.

Fujitsu Executive Yoshiko Furuhama added that the lab would bridge the gap between on-site operational issues and top-level business strategy, thus enabling AI deployment to act not just as a back-end efficiency tool but as a lever for business transformation.

What It Means for Japan’s Technology Landscape

Acceleration of Adoption of Generative AI in Traditional Industries

The lab underlines one of the most important inflection points: generative AI is no longer solely the domain of bleeding-edge tech firms or large native Internet firms. By marrying Fujitsu’s deep domain know-how in Japanese retail and service industries-sectors historically slow to digitize-with AWS’s scalable cloud and AI infrastructure, this initiative can dramatically lower friction for AI adoption.

Legacy systems, such as mainframes and EDI, along with fragmented data, have often hamstrung business leaders in Japan. This lab gives organizations a structured way to reimagine their operations, modernize infrastructure, and experiment with AI use cases closely coupled to real business KPIs.

Strengthening the Japan Cloud & AI Ecosystem

Fujitsu partners with AWS to enhance its relationship. This brings together AWS’s global cloud power and Fujitsu’s know-how in Japan. It also leverages strong client ties. This partnership supports Fujitsu’s Technology and Service Vision 2025. It aims to build cross-industry ecosystems and work with people and AI.

The lab partners with Japanese businesses to create AI solutions. This increases cloud adoption and helps make data-driven decisions. It also helps Japanese companies compete globally. It also supports Fujitsu’s sustainability vision. It drives innovation that creates a lasting impact, not just temporary digital wins.

Business Impact: Legacy Modernization + New Revenue Streams

From a business-model point of view, the lab helps in two different yet complementary ways:

Modernizing legacy operations: Companies encumbered with outdated infrastructure can gradually transition to API-driven systems, leveraging generative AI to codify and standardize the tacit knowledge-for example, when senior experts retire or leave the company.

Creating new business value: Beyond cost cutting, the generative-AI use cases from this lab may help businesses build new services, better customer engagement, and new revenue models. This would be critical in a market where Japanese service companies face labor shortages, compressed margins, and growing consumer expectations.

Risk Mitigation and Faster Time-To-Market

One of the biggest barriers to AI transformation is risk-both technical and strategic. The Business Creation Lab de-risks innovation by embedding PoC with actionable outcomes, not abstract prototypes. In addition, Fujitsu and AWS aim for a 90-day PoC-to-deployment cycle, which provides a fast feedback loop for iterative learning and real business outcomes.

Broader Implications for Japan’s Economy and Global Tech Industry

National Competitiveness: Modernization of firms in Japan and the acceptance of generative AI may further improve their productivity and innovative capabilities, making Japan more competitive in international markets.

Talent and skills: The lab will accelerate learning around generative AI, best practices, and cross-functional innovation in Japanese companies. This will contribute to solving Japan’s lack of digital skills.

Sustainable growth: Aligning AI transformation with the firms’ business KPIs will ensure the creation of immediate ROIs and long-term value. This also dovetails with the sustainability objectives since digital efficiency often correlates with lower environmental overhead.

Ecosystem ripples: The success of the Lab model could be reproduced in other industries, such as manufacturing and healthcare, to accelerate AI-led transformation more broadly across Japan. Such work would also deepen the Japanese cloud and data ecosystem, therefore making it more attractive for global AI players.

Challenges to Watch

While the ambition for the lab is high, there are also challenges:

Data governance: Generative AI in regulated industries needs strong controls. Focus on data quality, privacy, and compliance.

Change management: Many Japanese companies are still hierarchical. Embedding AI-driven workflows will need a change in mindset for management and operations teams.

Scalability: Transitioning from PoC to full-scale deployment carries risks. Success in a pilot project doesn’t always mean it will be used across the entire organization.

Sustainability of Innovation: To continue creating value, Fujitsu will need to ensure there is always a pipeline of use cases and measurable business impact in steady succession.

Conclusion

The new Business Creation Lab with AWS Japan is a strategically timely bet from Fujitsu, which blends generative AI with deep industry domain expertise in modernization and innovation in the retail and service sectors of Japan. This could be a powerful engine for digital transformation to enable rapid PoCs, reduce the friction of legacy system transformation, and anchor AI initiatives in business KPIs.

For Fujitsu, the initiative reinforces its vision of a net-positive future, one in which AI and technology do not just optimize operations but help build business value, sustainability, and long-term trust. And for Japan’s wider tech industry, it is a signal: generative AI is no longer an optional experiment, but rather the route by which established companies will increasingly seek to reinvent themselves in the digital age.