Sumitomo Corporation

And the real problem with this data center as well is it's l- it's funded by the kind of the Avengers of data center funding.

You've got Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, the two Jap- big Japanese banks who funded Stargate Abilene and a bunch of other loans, bunch of CoreWeave stuff.

You've got Goldman, you've got BNP Paribas.

You've got all of the class-- All the stars are here.

He argues investors should look at the five great Japanese trading houses that Buffett has spent the last six years buying into.

Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo.

So as Buffett's reign at Berkshire ends, one of his final great investment themes... might be where investors find his next great act.

And that is Japan.

It might be a bit too realistic as this type of mistake has happened a number of times since the film came out and the losses have only gotten bigger over time.

A year after the collapse of Bearings, there was a $2.6 billion loss at Sumitomo.

Queco Adebole lost $2.3 billion at UBS in 2011, and the biggest loss of all was Jerome Curviell who lost $6.3 billion in 2007.

Curviell actually became the world's poorest man in 2008 when a French court ruled that he had to pay back the full $6.3 billion that he had lost.

They're in Japan and not a lot of people even know there's exploration being done in Japan.

But they have like Newmont as a shareholder, Sumitomo as a shareholder.

So they have some of the biggest names in the sector as a shareholder because they see the potential.

Obviously Hishikari is the, what that Hishikari mine is worth, I don't know, but that's going to be several billion dollars at least.

To be, uh, in New Zealand, to be competitive, we had to be bringing in bulk, like 35,000, 1,000 tons at a time.

And [laughs] you don't do that with the financial resources I had, so we had to find a partner, and we found, uh, Sumitomo in Japan.

They came on board, but then, um, eventually down the track, Ballance got themselves into a position where, uh, Sumitomo sold, sold them some of their shares, and then, uh, made, made, uh, Sumitomo an offer they couldn't refuse to buy them out.

So that was the beginning of the end for sort of Summit Quinphos, as it was at the time.

Mm.

And I think, again, this is what we've been building our business for.

Something I wanted to come back to, you've used the Sumitomo analogy.

Is there something about the Kaibatsu that you like, or is that kind of a coincidence? like I can see some interesting parallels with like, seed stage venture firms, you know, especially something more like Y Combinator or maybe Seedcamp where it's kind of like, you know, the portfolio companies all sell to each other and there's a network and there's kind of a value in them kind of being an insider group.

Obviously there are downsides and risks with that, right? You end up with like ossified kind of structures and it's very difficult to, you know, it creates a kind of conservatism, which I think is like why...

Or is that just, you know, a coincidental kind of pattern?

Look, I think I've got lots of thoughts on this.

But, you know, fundamentally, I've gotten to know Sumitomo over the last three or four years because they were co-investors with us in M-Copa.

Right.

Narita Airport near Tokyo and airports in Western Japan are part of the project.

Trading house Sumitomo helped to build the AI system.

The company says it analyzes data from cameras on inspection vehicles and drones to check for cracks on runways or other abnormalities.

Airports face a shortage of specialized inspection staff as aviation demand increases due to a surge in international visitors.

Sumitomo says its AI monitoring method could potentially cut inspection times in half.

Airports plan to start introducing the system after the tests are complete.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics has opened a new semiconductor hub near Tokyo.