NVIDIA and Japan Launch National Physical AI Infrastructure

The Japanese government and NVIDIA Corporation announced the creation of the world's first national infrastructure for physical AI, centered on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory. This 140-megawatt facility will be built by Noetra Corp., a consortium including SoftBank Corp., Sony, NEC, and Honda. The infrastructure features 27,500 Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs to support the FRONTia Project, which develops multimodal foundation models for robotics and industrial automation. The project may receive up to ¥1 trillion in funding through 2030.

During a two-day visit to Japan, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang unveiled Cosmos 3 Edge, a world model AI designed for real-time robot navigation. To accelerate adoption, NVIDIA formed the Cosmos Coalition with industrial giants including Fujitsu, Hitachi, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, FANUC, and Yaskawa Electric. These partners are developing autonomous robots to address Japan's labor shortages in manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare. NVIDIA is also expanding into biotechnology via the Tokyo-1 consortium and partnerships with pharmaceutical firms like Astellas Pharma Inc.

This initiative aligns with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's strategy to capture over 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040. To protect national competitiveness against the U.S. and China, a consortium of 44 Japanese companies is developing a sovereign AI foundation model, with Noetra Corp. aiming to release the model by March 2027. The broader Government of Japan plans to invest 370 trillion yen in technology fields by 2040 to regain global competitiveness.