source: techcrunch ai: what to watch for after jensen huang’s japan visit
level: business
nvidia ceo jensen huang spent two days in tokyo meeting with japan's industrial and chip leaders. he left with agreements covering a national ai factory, partnerships with major robotics companies, and deals with chip material suppliers. huang said ai's next chapter belongs to factory floors, robots, and machines, and he wants japan to build it.
a key project is noetra, a consortium of about 44 japanese firms including softbank, sony, nec, and honda. they plan to build homegrown physical ai for robots, vehicles, and factories. the government is putting up to 1 trillion yen over five years. nvidia will supply a data center with next-generation vera rubin chips, expected in 2028, to train large models. the plan moves from japanese language reasoning models to omni-modal ai by 2028, and real-world native ai for robots by 2030.
nvidia also lined up robotics and manufacturing giants like fanuc, yaskawa, kawasaki heavy, and toyota. they will use nvidia's cosmos models and the new cosmos 3 edge version running on jetson thor chips. toyota committed its next vehicles to nvidia's drive platform and will use nvidia for manufacturing simulations and traffic systems. japan aims to deploy 10 million ai-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040, backed by $65 billion in investment, seeking over 30% of the global ai robotics market.
why it matters: this shows how nations are investing in sovereign ai infrastructure and physical ai to control their own data and manufacturing future, with nvidia providing the core chips.
source: techcrunch ai: what to watch for after jensen huang’s japan visit