NVIDIA will partner with Japanese AI consortium Noetra to build the NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory, comprising 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs. Noetra's private-sector backers include Honda and SoftBank.

The project carries backing from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) as part of its FRONTia Project, which targets AI agents, digital twins, and industrial robotics development across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and telecommunications.

Noetra will architect the facility using NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks on the DSX platform, connected and scaled with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking, laying the groundwork for open multimodal foundation models to power AI agents, digital twins, and robotics.

Under Japan's AI Robotics Strategy, released in March 2025, the country aims to secure more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, an opportunity estimated at US$133bn. Japan's industry ministry also aims to introduce about 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040 in response to the country's growing labour shortage.

Japan currently produces 45% of the global supply of industrial robots, making it the world's largest robot manufacturer. However, installation figures paint a different competitive picture: China installed roughly 295,000 industrial robots in 2024, compared with 44,500 in Japan, the world's second-largest market.

Hironobu Tamba, CEO of Noetra, notes that bringing physical AI into the real world requires enormous computing, data, and foundational technologies that no single company can solve alone.

Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ryosei Akazawa, describes the FRONTia Project as the core of the country's physical AI ecosystem, built by combining Japan's onsite expertise and manufacturing infrastructure with global partners such as NVIDIA to develop highly reliable multimodal foundation models.

Key Takeaways

• →Japan and NVIDIA are building a 140MW physical AI factory with the Noetra consortium, backed by a ¥380bn (US$2.3bn) government grant.
• →The site will run on 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs using NVIDIA's DSX platform and Spectrum-X networking.
• →The project is part of Japan's FRONTia Project under METI, targeting AI agents, digital twins, and industrial robotics.
• →Japan aims to capture 30%+ of the global AI robotics market by 2040, an estimated $133bn opportunity, and deploy 10 million AI-equipped robots.
• →Japan produces 45% of the world's industrial robots but trails China in annual installations (44,500 vs. roughly 295,000 in 2024).
• →China's domestic robot manufacturers now hold 57% share of their home market, up from 47% in 2023, intensifying competitive pressure.