Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently concluded a significant two-day visit to Tokyo on July 15 and 16, engaging with Japan’s leading industrial and chip-supply executives. This trip followed a keynote address in Taiwan weeks prior and a visit to South Korea months earlier. Huang’s Tokyo agenda yielded comprehensive agreements across Japan’s technology landscape, including plans for a national AI factory, collaborations with prominent robotics manufacturers, and partnerships with key chip-material suppliers essential for Nvidia’s next generation of AI chips. His message was unequivocal: Nvidia is strategically focused on Japan’s factory floors, and a substantial number of the country’s largest manufacturers are aligning with this vision. Huang articulated that the next chapter of AI will unfold within factory environments, robots, and machinery, and he aims for Japan to be at the forefront of this development.
Recalling a pivotal moment three decades ago when a $5 million investment from Sega helped rescue a then-struggling Nvidia, the present moment sees Nvidia and Japan’s industrial powerhouses once again in a mutually dependent relationship. This time, their shared objective is to usher in the era of physical AI, commencing with three foundational projects.
Central to Japan’s strategy is Noetra, the nation’s sovereign AI initiative. Driven by a desire to avoid reliance on American or Chinese AI for its factories and robots, the Japanese government has mobilized approximately 44 domestic firms, with SoftBank, Sony, NEC, and Honda playing pivotal roles, to develop proprietary AI solutions for robotics, vehicles, and manufacturing facilities. Tokyo is committing up to 1 trillion yen ($6.2 billion) over five years to this endeavor, emphasizing homegrown “physical AI” and foundation models designed to operate machinery. While Japan seeks to own the software intelligence, the necessary hardware will be supplied by Nvidia. The U.S. chip giant is constructing a “Vera Rubin AI factory,” a massive data center slated for a 2028 launch. This facility will house 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs, delivering 140 megawatts of power. Noetra will oversee the data center’s development and operation. Noetra’s phased plan includes a reasoning model specializing in Japanese language skills by fiscal year 2026, an omni-modal version processing text, images, video, and audio by 2028, and “Real-world Native AI” designed for robots by 2030, with phased releases to external Noetra developers.
A significant robotics coalition is also forming, with Japan’s industrial giants rallying behind Nvidia’s Cosmos models. Nvidia’s focus on Japan’s factory floor has attracted many of the nation’s leading robotics and manufacturing firms. Companies such as Fanuc, Yaskawa, Kawasaki Heavy, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Sony, SoftBank, Kubota, and the robotics group AIRoA have expressed intentions to leverage Nvidia’s Cosmos models, an open-model initiative launched by Nvidia in May with several global AI labs. During his Tokyo visit, Nvidia reinforced this commitment by unveiling Cosmos 3 Edge, a version of the model optimized to run on its Jetson Thor chips directly within machines. Some partners are already piloting a shared control system, while others, including Honda R&D and Omron, are actively developing solutions using these tools. Jensen Huang stated, “The next frontier of AI is in the physical world, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan. Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it has the opportunity to reinvent it for the age of intelligent industries.”
Toyota’s involvement extends across its vehicle and manufacturing operations, deeply integrating Nvidia chips. The automotive giant had previously committed its next-generation vehicles to Nvidia’s Drive platform at CES in January 2025. This latest collaboration further embeds Nvidia’s technology into Toyota’s manufacturing processes, utilizing simulations for production line design, into the software powering its vehicles, and into systems for real-time road traffic analysis. Toyota’s vehicles will incorporate advanced driver assistance systems that manage steering and braking but still necessitate driver supervision, a more cautious strategy compared to Waymo and Tesla, which are pursuing systems with reduced human intervention.
Huang’s visit effectively positioned physical AI at the core of Japan’s industrial strategy, a vision that Tokyo is vigorously supporting with substantial investment. Confronting a demographic challenge marked by a shrinking workforce, Japan has set an ambitious target of deploying 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040, underpinned by $65 billion in combined public and private investment in physical AI.
The long-term vision is even more expansive. Japan’s AI Robotics Strategy, unveiled in March, aims for the nation to capture over 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, a market Tokyo estimates to be worth approximately ¥20 trillion, or about $133 billion. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is funding a domestic foundation model to power these machines, and the Noetra factory, powered by Nvidia, is where models of immense scale—potentially reaching trillions of parameters—will be trained. The strategic gamble is that Japan’s rich factory-floor data and robust manufacturing base can serve as a unique advantage for advancing physical AI.
Beyond the industrial objectives, a profound sovereign ambition underpins these initiatives. As the United States and China forge ahead in large-scale AI development, Tokyo is determined to secure its own data, computing power, and reduce its reliance on external infrastructure. Jensen Huang’s presence on July 16 alongside Trade Minister Ryosei Akazawa at the government’s physical-AI launch, with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi joining via video, underscored the high-level political backing. The Takaichi administration has designated AI and semiconductors as central pillars of a growth plan targeting ¥370 trillion ($2.3 trillion) in public and private investment by 2040. Noetra’s factory, which Nvidia proudly touts as “the world’s first national AI infrastructure,” represents Japan’s most concrete commitment to this vision. Paradoxically, Japan’s drive for independence, at least for the foreseeable future, remains reliant on American silicon.
During his two-day visit, Huang engaged with virtually every key figure in Japanese technology. This included lunch meetings with the CEOs of industry giants like Toyota, Fanuc, Yaskawa, Fujitsu, and Kawasaki, as well as more informal gatherings with dozens of supply-chain chiefs over skewers and whisky in a Kanda izakaya.
This strategic approach mirrors the playbook Huang executed in previous weeks, which included a homecoming keynote in Taiwan, a casual fried chicken meal, and a substantial 50,000-GPU deal secured in Seoul last fall. This time, it was Tokyo’s turn to be the focus, with discussions centered on robots, the intricate supply chain, and the foundational chips that power it all.
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