PANASONIC Holdings will embrace artificial intelligence (AI) technology across its hardware and software businesses and team up with Anthropic, one of the leaders in the industry, with the goal of boosting AI-related revenue to 30 per cent in a decade, chief executive officer Yuki Kusumi said.
“The way we work will change when we make full use of AI,” Kusumi said in an interview discussing the announcement of the partnership and initiative at CES in Las Vegas.
Panasonic is among the first Japanese major electronics conglomerates to set AI-linked financial goals, although rivals such as Hitachi and NEC have also built up their own expertise in the area. Kusumi, who has been agitating for greater change at the company since he became CEO in 2021, described the latest push as being critical for Panasonic’s future.
Calling it Panasonic Go, Kusumi said the company will offer AI-enabled products and services for customers, and also deploy the technology internally for development and to streamline workflows. Eventually, AI-related business will make up a third of revenue by 2035, from just a few percentage points right now, the CEO said.
The partnership with Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees and has become one of the ChatGPT maker’s closest rivals, is meant to improve natural-language interaction with Panasonic’s products. With its Claude family of chatbots, Anthropic has gained traction selling AI software to businesses, including finance and healthcare firms.
Panasonic unveiled Umi, an AI-based assistant using Anthropic’s Claude chat technology, showing how the platform delivered through various devices can use customers’ information to make their lives easier. Separately, Panasonic unveiled in November an AI-based clone of founder Konosuke Matsushita based on his writings, speeches, and over 3,000 voice recordings.
Kusumi has been seeking to inject a greater urgency among Panasonic’s business, saying in an interview last year that the company needs to embrace a “sense of crisis” because the Osaka-based Japanese electronics maker was falling behind on its profitability targets. The advent of AI will make it clearer where to add value, Kusumi said.
“We should be looking to deploy people in places where they can use their abilities, leaving AI to do what AI can do,” Kusumi said. “It’s important to use the technology, and then add value where you can add value.”
Once a global leader in consumer electronics, Panasonic is now a key battery supplier to Tesla and investing in software, while seeking to retain its relevance in appliances and industrial devices. Panasonic adopted a holding company structure in 2022, a revamp aimed at making each division more accountable for its performance. BLOOMBERG
