During a two-day visit (July 15-16, 2026) in Tokyo, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang secured a series of strategic deals with Japan’s leading industrial and technology giants. This milestone marks Nvidia’s aggressive expansion into manufacturing floors and robotics through the era of "physical AI". According to TechCrunch, Nvidia is targeting Japanese factories to transform them into next-generation intelligent automation centers.
Background & Causes
Japan is currently facing a shrinking workforce and severe demographic challenges. To address this, the Japanese government announced its AI Robotics Strategy, aiming to deploy 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040, backed by $65 billion in public and private investment. The country does not want to run its critical infrastructure on American or Chinese AI, which led to the creation of the Noetra consortium to establish a "sovereign AI" capable of operating domestic factories and machines.
Detailed Developments
The centerpiece of the visit was the launch of Noetra, a consortium of 44 domestic firms including SoftBank, Sony, NEC, and Honda. The Japanese government committed up to 1 trillion yen (about $6.2 billion) over five years to this project. Noetra outlined a three-stage roadmap: developing a Japanese-heavy reasoning model by fiscal 2026, an omni-modal version by 2028, and a "Real-world Native AI" for robots by 2030. Additionally, automotive giant Toyota expanded its partnership with Nvidia beyond the Drive platform to include factory manufacturing simulations and advanced driver-assistance software.
Technical & Technological Analysis
On the infrastructure front, Nvidia is building a massive data center named "Vera Rubin AI factory," scheduled to launch in 2028. This 140-megawatt facility will feature 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs to train trillion-parameter models. Concurrently, Nvidia unveiled the Cosmos 3 Edge model, which runs locally on Jetson Thor chips inside the machines. This allows robots from manufacturers like Fanuc, Yaskawa, and Kawasaki Heavy to process edge-computing data without relying on the cloud.
Expert Opinions & Assessments
Speaking at the event, CEO Jensen Huang highlighted: "The next frontier of AI is in the physical world, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan." He added that Japan invented modern manufacturing and now has the opportunity to reinvent it for the age of intelligent industries. However, tech analysts from TechCrunch also pointed out a paradox: despite efforts to control its own software and data, Japan’s push for independence still heavily relies on American silicon and processor supplies.
Impact & Future
The synergy between Nvidia's hardware prowess and Japan's massive manufacturing database is expected to boost the global robotics market. Japan aims to capture over 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, a sector valued at approximately $133 billion. For Vietnamese tech enthusiasts and enterprises, the shift from software-only AI to "physical AI" controlling physical hardware offers a major lesson in combining traditional automation with artificial intelligence to solve future productivity challenges.