On July 16, NVIDIA announced that it will collaborate with Noetra to build the "NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI Factory," a national-level physical AI infrastructure in Japan. It will be used as the computing platform for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's "FRONTia Project" and will support the development of multimodal AI platform models for industries such as manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare.
Building an AI Factory
NVIDIA is a US company that develops semiconductors and software for AI and high-speed computing. Noetra will begin operations in July 2026, with investment from Sony Group, SoftBank, and others, and is promoting research and development of a domestically produced multimodal platform model that will serve as a development base for AI robots and physical AI.
The AI factory being built by Noetra will be equipped with over 13,750 NVIDIA Vera CPUs and over 27,500 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs. It will be used as the computing platform for the "FRONTia Project," a project promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to develop a multimodal platform model for AI robots and physical AI. The project aims to collect knowledge and industrial data from Japanese manufacturing sites and develop an open multimodal platform model for physical AI, thereby strengthening the ecosystem in Japan's industrial sector.
Noetra plans to provide pre-trained models and NVIDIA's AI software suite to domestic companies and research institutions to promote the development of physical AI applications.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang commented, "Japan has created a manufacturing industry and is now working to build AI factories that will drive the next industrial revolution. We are honored to collaborate with Japanese and industry leaders to build the AI infrastructure that will support Japan's industries, economy, and next generation of innovation."
Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ryosei Akazawa, also stated, "Japan has launched the 'FRONTia Project,' which will be at the core of forming a physical AI ecosystem. By collaborating with global innovators, including NVIDIA, and leveraging Japan's manufacturing strengths, we will build a highly reliable multimodal platform model and contribute to solving global social challenges."
Hirotora Tanba, president of Noetra, stated, "The social implementation of physical AI requires enormous computing power, data, and foundational technologies, which cannot be achieved by a single company alone. We want to collaborate with partners in Japan and around the world to build a Japan-led AI infrastructure model and widely share the results to promote its implementation in industry."
In the "AI Robotics Strategy" announced by the Japanese government in March, the goal is to capture more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, which is estimated to be a business worth $133 billion. This AI factory is positioned as part of the AI industry policies that will support the realization of this goal.
