NVIDIA Spearheads AI Revolution in Japan: Partnerships, Infrastructure, and Innovation

NVIDIA and SoftBank Collaborate on Japan's AI Future

NVIDIA's founder and CEO Jensen Huang and SoftBank's Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son recently convened at the NVIDIA AI Summit Japan to discuss the country's emerging role in the global AI revolution 1

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. Huang emphasized that "every industry, every company, every country must produce a new industrial revolution," with AI as the catalyst for this transformation 1

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Building Japan's AI Infrastructure

A key announcement from the summit was NVIDIA's collaboration with SoftBank to construct Japan's most powerful AI supercomputer 1

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. This initiative, utilizing NVIDIA's Blackwell platform, aims to drive sovereign AI initiatives, including the development of large language models (LLMs) specifically designed for Japan 1

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. SoftBank also successfully piloted the world's first combined AI and 5G network, known as AI-RAN, opening new possibilities for telecom providers 1

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Japanese Tech Leaders Embrace AI Innovation

Several Japanese tech giants are leveraging NVIDIA's technologies to develop advanced AI models:

• Fujitsu's Takane model, built for high-stakes sectors like finance and security, plans to use NVIDIA NeMo for additional fine-tuning 2

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• NEC's cotomi model uses NeMo's parallel processing techniques for efficient model training 2

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• NTT Group launched its "tsuzumi" large language model, accelerated with NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM 2

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Academic Contributions to Japan's AI Vision

Japanese universities are also playing a crucial role in the AI transformation:

• Nagoya University developed Ruri-Large, a Japanese embedding model built using NVIDIA's Nemotron-4 340B 2

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• The National Institute of Informatics is introducing LLM, a sovereign AI model developed from scratch 2

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• The University of Tokyo's Human Genome Center uses NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Parabricks software for rapid genomic analysis 2

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Startups Driving AI Innovation

Japan's startup ecosystem is thriving, with over 370 AI-driven startups in the NVIDIA Inception program 3

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. Notable examples include:

• AiHUB's digital celebrity Sali, which uses NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for enhanced expressiveness 3

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• Kotoba Technologies, which developed real-time speech recognition tools using NVIDIA NeMo 3

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• APTO, which uses NVIDIA NeMo Curator to refine data quality for LLMs 3

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Global Consulting Leaders Accelerate AI Adoption

Major consulting firms are establishing innovation centers in Japan to accelerate AI adoption across industries:

• Accenture, Deloitte, EY Japan, FPT, Kyndryl, and Tata Consultancy Services Japan are working with NVIDIA to set up these centers 4

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• These initiatives aim to help Japanese firms develop and deploy AI agents tailored to their specific industry needs 4

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Physical AI and Industrial Applications

Japanese industrial giants are leveraging NVIDIA's technologies for physical AI and industrial applications:

• Toyota is using NVIDIA Omniverse for physics simulation in robot motion and gripping 5

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• Yaskawa is expanding into new markets with its MOTOMAN NEXT adaptive robot, powered by NVIDIA Isaac and Omniverse platforms 5

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• Seven & i Holdings is running digital twin simulations to enhance customer experiences in retail environments 5

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As Japan faces demographic challenges and a potential workforce shortage, these AI-driven innovations are poised to play a crucial role in maintaining the country's economic competitiveness and addressing societal needs 4

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