What to watch for after Jensen Huang’s visit to Japan

Nvidia Chairman Jensen Huang spent two days — July 15 and 16 — in Tokyo, courting Japan’s industrial elite and chip suppliers, weeks after delivering a keynote speech in Taiwan, and months after a visit to South Korea. He left with deals spanning Japan’s entire tech ecosystem: a national AI factory, partnerships with the country’s leading robotics companies, and agreements with suppliers of chip materials that power Nvidia’s next-generation AI chips. His message was clear. Nvidia is targeting Japan’s factory floors, and is joined by many of the country’s largest manufacturers. Huang said the next chapter of artificial intelligence is related to factory floors, robots and machines, and he wants Japan to build it.

Thirty years ago, Sega’s $5 million investment helped keep near-bankrupt Nvidia afloat; Today, Nvidia and the Japanese industry giants need each other again — this time to build the age of physical AI, starting with these three projects:

Nnoitra — Japan’s sovereign play on artificial intelligence. The country does not want to operate its factories and robots using American or Chinese artificial intelligence. So, the government brought together nearly 44 local companies, with SoftBank, Sony, NEC and Honda at its core, to build its own AI for robots, vehicles and factory floors. Tokyo has pledged to allocate up to 1 trillion yen ($6.2 billion) over five years, betting on homegrown “physical artificial intelligence” models designed to operate machines. Japan wants to have a software brain. However, the hardware needed to build it still comes from Nvidia. The US chip giant is building the “Vera Rubin AI Factory”, a massive data center filled with next-generation chips, expected to launch in 2028, with 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs, providing 140 megawatts. Nnoitra will oversee the effort, with plans to build the data center. Nnoitra’s plan operates in three phases: a logical model that relies heavily on Japanese language skills starting in fiscal year 2026; a multimedia version that handles text, images, video and audio by 2028; and “real-world native AI” designed to power robots by 2030, which will be released to third-party Noetra developers in phases.

Robotics Alliance – Japanese industrial giants line up behind Cosmos. Nvidia is targeting Japan’s factory floor, and many of the country’s top robotics and manufacturing players have signed up. Fanuc, Yaskawa, Kawasaki Heavy, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Sony, SoftBank, Kubota and robotics group AIRoA say they plan to build on Nvidia’s Cosmos models, an open prototyping effort that Nvidia began in May with a group of global AI labs. And in Tokyo, Nvidia gave them a reason to commit, unveiling the Cosmos 3 Edge, a version of the model that runs on Jetson Thor chips inside the hardware itself. Some are already testing a common control system; Others, such as Honda R&D and Omron, are relying on the tools now. “The next frontier of artificial intelligence lies in the physical world, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan,” Huang said in a company statement. “Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now it has the opportunity to reinvent it for the age of smart industries.”

Toyota – Cars and Physical Artificial Intelligence. Toyota uses Nvidia chipsets across a large portion of its lineup. It debuted next-generation vehicles for Nvidia’s Drive platform at CES in January 2025; The more recent work expands Nvidia’s reach into manufacturing, where simulations are used to design production lines, in the software that manages its vehicles, and in systems that read road traffic. Toyota cars will run an advanced driver assistance system, which steers and brakes but still requires a driver, a more conservative approach than Waymo and Tesla, which are developing systems that rely less on a human driver.

Huang’s visit has placed physical AI at the heart of Japan’s industrial strategy, and Tokyo is spending to support this strategy. Facing a shrinking workforce, Japan wants 10 million AI-equipped robots in 18 sectors by 2040, supported by $65 billion in public and private investment in physical AI.

The longer the game, the bigger the game. Japan’s AI robot strategy, released in March, aims to capture more than 30% of the global AI robot market by 2040, a market Tokyo estimates at about 20 trillion yen, or about $133 billion. METI is funding a local enterprise model to run the machines, and the Nvidia-powered Noetra factory is where models of this scale, down to trillions of parameters, will be trained. The bet is that Japan’s factory data and manufacturing base could benefit physical AI

Under the artificial stadium there is a sovereign stadium. As the United States and China advance large-scale artificial intelligence, Tokyo wants its own data, its own calculations, and less reliance on infrastructure it does not control. On July 16, Huang appeared alongside Trade Minister Ryusei Akazawa at the government’s AI launch event, joined by Prime Minister Sanae Takaishi via video. The Takaishi administration has made artificial intelligence and semiconductors the centerpiece of a growth plan that seeks 370 trillion yen ($2.3 trillion) in public and private investment by 2040. The Nuitra factory — which Nvidia describes as “the world’s first national AI infrastructure” — is its most obvious bet yet. Japan’s push for independence, at least for now, depends on American chips. In fact, this depends on American silicon.

Within two days, Huang sat across from almost every big name in Japanese technology — the CEOs of Toyota, Fanuc, Yaskawa, Fujitsu and Kawasaki over lunch, and dozens of supply chain heads over skewers and whiskey at Kanda Izakaya.

It’s the same playbook he ran weeks ago — a homecoming keynote in Taiwan, fried chicken, and a 50,000 GPU deal in Seoul last fall. This time, it was Tokyo’s turn, with the robots, supply chain, and chips beneath it.