Japan and Nvidia build world's first national AI infrastructure with 27,500 GPUs for robotics

Nvidia and Japan unveil world's first national AI infrastructure -- Noetra consortium to build a 140MW Rubin AI factory with 27,500 GPUs

Nvidia today announced that it's working with Japan's Noetra Corp. to build a 140-megawatt AI factory packing 27,500 Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs, the compute foundation for FRONTia, the Japanese government's state-funded physical AI program. The facility will be built from Vera Rubin NVL72 racks on Nvidia's DSX reference platform, connected with Spectrum-X Ethernet, and will train open multimodal foundation models for robotics, digital twins, and industrial automation, with pretrained weights shared broadly with domestic developers. "Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, in the announcement. The chip counts divide exactly into 382 Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, each housing 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs. Neither company disclosed the project's cost, but VR200 NVL72 systems are currently quoted at $5 million to $7 million apiece, which puts the rack hardware alone somewhere between $1.9 billion and $2.7 billion. Morgan Stanley estimates Nvidia will charge $55,000 per Rubin GPU in volume, pricing the GPU silicon at roughly $1.5 billion before memory, networking, and cooling. No deployment timeline was given in the announcement, but Rubin racks are only expected to reach volume production in the second half of this year, and Nvidia said the facility will support trillion-parameter model training "as the AI factory expands," suggesting a phased ramp. Noetra is a new consortium founded by SoftBank Corp., Sony, NEC, and Honda, with investment from 44 companies and organizations, NEC said in a press release also published today. Noetra and the national research institute AIST won a NEDO public tender on June 30 to run the FRONTia project from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2030, with ¥387.3 billion (roughly $2.4 billion) in first-year funding and up to ¥1 trillion (roughly $6.1 billion) over five years, Asia Times reported. Funding beyond the first two years is subject to annual stage-gate reviews, so the full amount isn't guaranteed. Noetra's roadmap targets a reasoning foundation model in fiscal 2026, an omni-modal model that processes text, images, video, and audio by fiscal 2028, and "real-world native AI" capable of spatial awareness by fiscal 2030, per NEC. The AI factory follows SoftBank's Blackwell-based DGX supercomputer, announced in 2024, and FugakuNEXT, the $740 million RIKEN, Fujitsu, and Nvidia zetta-scale system due around 2030, but it's the first that's state-tendered national infrastructure rather than a corporate or scientific machine. Japan's AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, targets more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, an opportunity the government estimates at $133 billion. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Japan is building a 140MW AI factory for robots, and Nvidia is supplying all of it

27,500 Rubin GPUs, 13,750 Vera CPUs, and a consortium owned by SoftBank, NEC, Sony and Honda. Nobody has said what it costs. Nvidia and a Japanese industrial consortium are building what Nvidia calls the world's first national AI infrastructure for physical AI, and the specification is unusually concrete for an announcement of this kind. The AI factory will run 13,750 Nvidia Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs across 140 megawatts of data centre capacity, built on the Nvidia DSX platform with Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, Spectrum-X Ethernet, and BlueField DPUs. It is being established by Noetra Corp, and is meant to produce open multimodal foundation models for AI agents, digital twins, and robots. Noetra is the part worth understanding. It is not a government body. It is a private consortium majority-owned by SoftBank, NEC, Sony Group, and Honda, and it is the vehicle through which Japan is routing its physical AI ambitions. It is also the second Nvidia announcement out of Tokyo this week. The first signed most of Japan's robotics establishment up to Nvidia's open world models. This one supplies the compute those models will be trained on. The state's role is upstream. METI and NEDO have jointly commissioned Noetra and AIST, the national research institute, to deliver the FRONTia Project, formally titled Development of Multimodal Foundation Models with a View to AI Robotics and Physical AI. The compute is the foundation for that work. The money behind it is large but more conditional than the headline figures suggest. METI has committed up to ¥1trn, roughly $6bn, across fiscal 2026 to 2030. The first tranche is ¥387.3bn, drawn from Japan's GX Economy Transition Bonds, and only the first two years are locked. The rest runs through annual stage-gate review, which makes ¥1trn a ceiling rather than a promise. "Japan has launched the FRONTia Project, which will serve as the core of the country's physical AI ecosystem," said Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. He framed it as combining foreign technology with domestic strengths, citing "Japan's onsite expertise and manufacturing technology infrastructure". Jensen Huang reached, as he did in Tokyo the day before, for the same historical note. "Japan invented modern manufacturing," he said. "Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution." What nobody has said is what any of it costs. Nvidia's release contains no purchase price, no deal value, and no dollar figure attached to the chips. It describes Nvidia working with Noetra to launch a facility Noetra is establishing, which is a different thing from a government buying hardware, and the distinction matters for who carries the risk. Noetra's chief executive, Hironobu Tamba, made the case for pooling. "Bringing physical AI into the real world requires enormous computing, data and foundational technologies," he said, "challenges no single company can solve alone." The strategic target Nvidia cites is Japan's AI Robotics Strategy, published in March, which aims for more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, an opportunity it estimates at $133bn. Separately, METI has set a target of 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by the same year. Those two numbers come from different documents and should not be blurred together, but they point the same way. Japan is not trying to build a frontier lab. It is trying to put intelligence into machines it already knows how to manufacture, which is a narrower bet and, on its own terms, a more plausible one. The comparison that suggests itself is unflattering. Europe has spent two years on a gigafactory programme that keeps slipping, while Japan has a named operator, a named ministry, a bond-funded first tranche, and a rack count. It has also handed the entire stack to a single American vendor, which is the trade Europe has spent those two years arguing about. Sovereignty, in this telling, means owning the models and the deployment while renting the silicon. Whether that counts is a question Tokyo appears to have answered by not asking it. The "world's first national AI infrastructure" framing, it should be said, is Nvidia's own, in its headline and its body text. No independent party has made the claim, and several countries might contest it.

Nvidia is building the world's first 'national AI' -- Japan's FRONTia Project could be the next big step forward in global progress, but is this a step too far?

* 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs will drive compute at the Nvidia Vera Rubin AI factory * The project will be the world's first national AI infrastructure for physical AI * By partnering with Noetra Corp, Nvidia is providing hardware to drive Japan's FRONTia Project Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is supporting a partnership between Noetra Corp and Nvidia to provide the foundation for the its national artificial intelligence initiative, the FRONTia Project. Noetra Corp - which comprises NEC, Sony, Honda, SoftBank Corp, and has backing from 44 other companies and organizations - won a tender on June 30 2026 to run FRONTia until 2030, with as much as ¥1 trillion (around $6.1 billion) expected to be invested in the project over the five years. Japan sees FRONTia as providing the heart of its sovereign AI ecosystem for industry, providing compute power for the development of advanced multimodal foundation models that can be used to drive physical AI. Robotics across industry and healthcare can potentially benefit from this, along with the development of superior AI agents and digital twins. What is the FRONTia Project? Aiming to foster collaboration between global technology leaders and Japan's manufacturing expertise, and leveraging real-world industrial data, the FRONTia Project (referring to the "Development of Multimodal Foundation Models with a View to AI Robotics and Physical AI" project) is described as "the core of the country's physical AI ecosystem," by Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. "By fostering collaboration between Japan and leading global innovators -- including NVIDIA -- and leveraging Japan's strengths, such as its onsite expertise and manufacturing technology infrastructure, we will build highly reliable multimodal foundation models and contribute to solving global social challenges." When constructed, the Nvidia Vera Rubin AI facility will provide Noetra's multimodal foundation models to domestic model developers and enterprises. Nvidia's own AI-related software models and libraries will also be available. There has been some criticism of the FRONTia Project, however. Concerned parties have highlighted the lack of financial transparency from Noetra and the Japanese government, as well as the presence of Nvidia as partners, with the US company seen as a strategic rival. Meanwhile the massive energy costs associated with AI installations is once again considered an unnecessary problem to create. "Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. "NVIDIA is honored to partner with Japan and its industrial leaders to build the AI infrastructure that will power the country's industries, its economy and a new generation of innovation." Is the world ready for physical AI? AI's impact on creative industries has been widely discussed, but its potential for beyond "generative" processes - such as in the physical space - have avoided scrutiny. To date, physical AI (the integration of AI with physical hardware such as robots, vehicles, or industrial machines) hasn't been able to scale as quickly as generative AIs with ever-deepening LLMs. Predicting the next word is a lot easier than, say, predicting shifting terrain for an autonomous machine, and without the delicate motor skills of a human, no process can be completely automated. This is a problem for physical AI, and investing money in developing solutions such as the NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory will surely have a direct impact on the workforce. A successful physical AI project means more automation from robots, and fewer physical jobs. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Japan Government, Industrial Leaders and NVIDIA Launch the World's First National AI Infrastructure

* NVIDIA to partner with Noetra Corp. to build the NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory with 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs to deliver 140 megawatts of data center capacity based on the NVIDIA DSX platform. * The initiative, supported by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), will provide the computing foundation for Japan's FRONTia Project to strengthen the country's ecosystem across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and more. * AI factory to create open multimodal foundation models to develop AI agents, digital twins, robotics and physical AI applications. NVIDIA today announced it is working with Noetra Corp. to launch an NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory with 13,750 NVIDIA Vera CPUs and 27,500 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs for national physical AI. Supported by Japan's AI and industry leaders, the initiative marks the world's first national AI infrastructure for physical AI, strengthening the country's AI ecosystem across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, telecommunications and more. The new AI factory, established by Noetra, will be architected with NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks using the NVIDIA DSX™ platform, connected and scaled with NVIDIA Spectrum-X™ Ethernet networking. It will enable the development of open multimodal foundation models that power AI agents, digital twins, robotics and other physical AI applications. The NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory will provide the computing foundation for Japan's FRONTia Project, which refers to the project titled, "Development of Multimodal Foundation Models with a View to AI Robotics and Physical AI," launched by METI. The project brings together the country's manufacturing expertise, real-world industrial data and global technology leaders to develop highly reliable multimodal foundation models for physical AI. The pretrained weights of Noetra's multimodal foundation models will be made broadly available to domestic model developers and enterprises alongside software such as NVIDIA Nemotron™, NVIDIA Cosmos™, NVIDIA Isaac™ GR00T open models, NVIDIA NeMo™ libraries and more. This will accelerate the development of agentic AI and physical AI applications. "Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "NVIDIA is honored to partner with Japan and its industrial leaders to build the AI infrastructure that will power the country's industries, its economy and a new generation of innovation." "Japan has launched the FRONTia Project, which will serve as the core of the country's physical AI ecosystem," said Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. "By fostering collaboration between Japan and leading global innovators -- including NVIDIA -- and leveraging Japan's strengths, such as its onsite expertise and manufacturing technology infrastructure, we will build highly reliable multimodal foundation models and contribute to solving global social challenges." "Bringing physical AI into the real world requires enormous computing, data and foundational technologies -- challenges no single company can solve alone," said Hironobu Tamba, CEO of Noetra. "Together with partners across Japan and around the world, Noetra will advance Japan-developed multimodal foundation models and accelerate the deployment of physical AI across Japanese industries by broadly sharing the results of our research." Built on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin DSX AI factory architecture, the AI factory will deliver 140 megawatts of data center capacity combined with the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform, NVIDIA BlueFieldDPUs, and tightly codesigned silicon, systems and software to provide breakthrough AI performance, lower token costs and massive scale for frontier AI training. NVIDIA DSX provides a reference design and platform for AI factories, helping infrastructure builders accelerate time to production, increase token throughput per megawatt and operate with greater reliability and efficiency. Advancing Japan's Physical AI Ambitions Japan's AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, sets a goal for the country to capture more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, representing an estimated $133 billion opportunity. To help achieve the goal, METI is advancing a multimodal foundation model program for robotics and physical AI as part of Japan's broader industrial AI policy. As the AI factory expands, it will support training trillion-parameter-scale AI models, giving organizations across Japan access to one of the world's most advanced AI environments and laying the foundation for the next era of intelligent manufacturing and robotics.

Japan to buy Nvidia Rubin chips to build an AI for robots

Japan is planning to buy 27,500 next-generation Rubin chips from Nvidia to build a homegrown foundational AI model for robots. Newly established Noetra, which has been allocated ¥387.3 billion ($2.4 billion) from government coffers through March of next year, said it will oversee the endeavor and build a roughly 140 megawatt data center. Dozens of companies including Sony Group, SoftBank, Toyota-backed Preferred Networks and NEC are helping to set up and operate Noetra. Noetra's data center is slated to go online in June 2028. Its Rubin order, while sizable, is small compared with plans by Microsoft to eventually build data centers scaling hundreds of thousands of Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems.

Nvidia CEO says it's 'time for Japan AI' with infrastructure pledge

STORY: :: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announces a partnership with Japan's government and Noetra Corp to build 'physical AI' infrastructure :: Tokyo, Japan / July 16, 2026 :: Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO "Japan has been a very close partner and close friend of ours and a very close friend of mine, and so I'm delighted to be of service to Japan. And I'm very happy to see that Japan now has decided that this is the time for Japan AI, and that Japan will build an infrastructure. And to build this AI infrastructure for all of the companies and researchers and students and government, so that you can build a future for Japan on top of AI.'' "Japan cannot outsource its national intelligence. Japan must own, improve, secure, and deploy Japan AI. The technology that makes this possible has finally arrived and is called physical AI. After 15 years of work, physical AI is here. The foundation of the next industrial revolution. And this should be made in Japan." "To begin the journey to build Japan AI, a new kind of infrastructure is needed, a new kind of factory, an AI factory. Today, we are honored to partner with METI (Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) and NOETRA to build the world's first national AI infrastructure for physical AI." Huang said the partnership would require "a new kind of infrastructure ... an AI factory" to support Japan's ambitions in the sector. He added that Nvidia would provide the computing systems for Japan's first national AI infrastructure, as well as its full-stack AI platform. Noetra plans to begin construction in April 2027 and start operations in June of the following year. Huang has achieved rock star status in Taiwan and his appearances have also generated interest from onlookers in Japan, which boasts leading companies in the chip supply chain.

Japan to Buy Nvidia Chips to Power Its AI Push -- Update

By Yang Jie and Megumi Fujikawa Nvidia chips are set to power Japan's artificial-intelligence push, with the government planning to buy thousands of the company's next-generation semiconductors to build an AI ecosystem on its own soil. Backed by massive government funding, Japan's purchase of 27,500 Nvidia AI chips will fuel a computing hub slated to launch in 2028, according to an announcement made during Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang's visit to Tokyo. The infrastructure will support efforts by state-backed consortium Noetra to develop so-called physical AI--the technology that lets machines interact in the real world. It's all part of Tokyo's overarching plan to develop homegrown alternatives to foreign platforms. Under the agreement, Nvidia will supply AI chips and computing infrastructure for foundational models to Noetra, an alliance spearheaded by SoftBank Group, Sony Group, Honda Motor and other Japanese industry titans. "Japan cannot outsource its national intelligence," Huang said at an event in Tokyo. "Japan must own, improve, secure and deploy Japan AI." Noetra plans to release an initial foundation model in fiscal 2026 that will gradually evolve to handle multimodal data like images and audio. By fiscal 2030, it aims to develop the system into an advanced "artificial brain" capable of understanding complex real-world environments, eventually enabling factory machines, robots and vehicles to make decisions on their own. Japan is one of many countries rushing to invest in sovereign AI to secure technological independence and shield themselves from geopolitical vulnerabilities. By hosting computing infrastructure locally and training models on domestic data, governments can safeguard highly sensitive information, protect critical infrastructure like energy grids from foreign interference, and power industries like robotics on their own terms. "In the era of big data and AI, Japan's path to victory lies in leveraging its position as a super-aging society and a disaster-prone nation," said Japan's trade minister, Ryosei Akazawa, who attended Thursday's event wearing a black leather jacket like the one that has become Huang's trademark. Japan has real-world data from its factories and extreme situations like the Fukushima nuclear cleanup, Akazawa said. It is crucial to use big data and physical AI to tackle challenges like nuclear decommissioning, an aging population, natural disasters and labor shortages, while simultaneously driving Japan's economic growth, he added. "As dependence on foreign technology remains a challenge in building AI domestically, it is highly encouraging to see the establishment of a development foundation for domestic physical AI models," Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in a video message. "Let's make this frontier project-creating reliable physical AI here in Japan and exporting it to the world-the banner for Japan's revitalization," she said. --Sherry Qin contributed to this report Write to Yang Jie at [email protected] and Megumi Fujikawa at [email protected]

Nvidia, Noetra to Build AI Factory to Power Japan's AI Ambitions

Nvidia is partnering with Japan's Noetra Corp. to build an AI factory to support the country's artificial-intelligence infrastructure. The U.S. chip giant and Noetra, a new company established by a consortium of Japanese firms, including SoftBank Corp. and Sony Group Corp., will build the AI factory to provide the computing foundation to develop multimodal foundation models for physical AI, Nvidia said Thursday. The initiative, supported by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is part of Japan's effort to accelerate its AI development. Japan released its AI robotics strategy in March, setting a goal for the country to capture more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040. The AI factory will feature 13,750 Vera central processing units and 27,500 Rubin graphics processing units, delivering 140 megawatts of data-center capacity. As the AI factory expands, it will support AI model training, giving organizations across Japan access to one of the world's most advanced AI environments. In a separate release, Noetra said the AI factory is scheduled to begin construction in April 2027, with operations expected to begin in June 2028. Noetra, along with its core member companies and investors, have launched research and development for a homegrown multimodal foundation model to power AI-enabled robots and physical AI. Noetra aims to develop a foundation model capable of seamlessly processing text, images, video and audio by fiscal 2028, it added.