英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋在台湾发表主题演讲数周后,在访问韩国数月后,于7月15日至16日在东京度过了两天,向日本工业和芯片供应精英阶层示好。他离开时带回了覆盖日本整个科技生态系统的协议:一座国家级AI工厂、与日本领先机器人公司的合作伙伴关系,以及与为英伟达下一代AI芯片提供支持的芯片材料供应商的协议。他的信息很明确:英伟达正瞄准日本的工厂车间,而日本许多最大的制造商也正在加入。黄仁勋表示,AI的下一个篇章属于工厂车间、机器人和机械设备,他希望日本来构建这一切。
三十年前,世嘉(Sega)一笔500万美元的投资帮助濒临破产的英伟达得以生存;如今,英伟达和日本的工业巨头再次需要彼此——这一次是为了构建物理AI时代,从以下三个项目开始:
Noetra——日本的主权AI布局。日本不希望其工厂和机器人运行在美国或中国的AI之上。因此,日本政府汇集了约44家本土企业,以软银、索尼、NEC和本田为核心,构建用于机器人、车辆和工厂车间的自有AI。东京方面将在五年内投入高达1万亿日元(约62亿美元),押注于本土的“物理AI”,即用于运行机器的基座模型。日本希望拥有这个软件大脑。然而,构建它的硬件仍然来自英伟达。这家美国芯片巨头正在建设一座“Vera Rubin AI工厂”,这是一个搭载其下一代芯片的大型数据中心,预计于2028年上线,配备13,750个Vera CPU和27,500个Rubin GPU,提供140兆瓦功率。Noetra将负责监督这项工作,并计划建设该数据中心。Noetra的计划分三个阶段推进:从2026财年开始,推出一个侧重日语能力的推理模型;到2028年,推出一个处理文本、图像、视频和音频的全模态版本;到2030年,构建用于运行机器人的“真实世界原生AI”,并分阶段向Noetra外部的开发者发布。
机器人联盟——日本工业巨头齐聚 Cosmos 阵营。英伟达正瞄准日本工厂车间,该国众多顶级机器人及制造业企业纷纷加入。发那科、安川电机、川崎重工、富士通、日立、NEC、索尼、软银、久保田以及机器人集团 AIRoA 均表示,计划基于英伟达的 Cosmos 模型进行开发。该模型是英伟达于今年 5 月与数家全球 AI 实验室共同启动的开源模型项目。在东京,英伟达给了它们一个承诺的理由,发布了 Cosmos 3 Edge——该模型的一个版本,可在机器内部的 Jetson Thor 芯片上运行。部分企业已在测试共享控制系统;其他企业,如本田研发和欧姆龙,目前正在基于这些工具进行开发。“AI 的下一个前沿领域在物理世界,这对日本来说是一个千载难逢的机遇,”黄仁勋在公司声明中表示,“日本发明了现代制造业。如今,它有机会在智能工业时代重塑这一领域。”
**丰田——汽车与物理 AI。** 丰田在其大部分技术栈中使用了英伟达芯片。它在 2025 年 1 月的国际消费电子展上承诺,其下一代汽车将采用英伟达的 Drive 平台;更新的工作将英伟达的应用扩展到其制造环节(利用仿真设计生产线)、运行汽车的软件,以及读取道路交通的系统。丰田的汽车将搭载高级驾驶辅助系统,该系统可进行转向和制动,但仍需驾驶员操作。与 Waymo 和特斯拉正在开发的、较少依赖人类驾驶员的系统相比,这是一种更为保守的做法。
为何重要
黄仁勋的此次到访将物理 AI 置于日本产业战略的核心位置,东京方面正投入资金予以支持。面对劳动力不断萎缩的局面,日本计划到 2040 年在 18 个行业部署 1000 万台配备 AI 的机器人,并为此投入 650 亿美元的公共和私人物理 AI 投资。
更长远的棋局更为宏大。日本于今年3月发布的《人工智能机器人战略》,目标是在2040年前占据全球AI机器人市场30%以上的份额,东京方面对该市场的估值约为20万亿日元(约合1330亿美元)。日本经济产业省正在资助开发一款用于驱动这些机器的国产基础模型,而Noetra公司那座由英伟达提供算力的工厂,正是用于训练这种规模(参数达数万亿级别)的模型。这场赌注在于:日本拥有的工厂车间数据和制造业基础,能够为物理AI的发展提供支撑。
在产业诉求之下,是主权层面的考量。随着美国和中国在大规模AI领域领先,东京希望拥有自己的数据、自己的算力,并减少对不受其控制的基础设施的依赖。黄仁勋于7月16日与日本贸易大臣赤泽亮正一同出席了政府举办的物理AI启动活动,首相高市早苗通过视频连线参与。高市早苗政府已将AI和半导体作为增长计划的核心,该计划的目标是到2040年实现370万亿日元(约合2.3万亿美元)的公共和私人投资。Noetra的工厂——被英伟达称为“全球首个国家级AI基础设施”——是迄今为止最明确的押注。日本追求独立的努力,至少目前来看,仍依赖于美国的芯片。
全场周旋
在两天时间里,黄仁勋几乎与日本科技界所有举足轻重的人物进行了会面——与丰田、发那科、安川电机、富士通和川崎重工的CEO共进午餐,并在神田的一家居酒屋里,与数十位供应链负责人边吃烤串、边喝威士忌交谈。
这与他在数周前采取的策略如出一辙——在台湾发表回乡主题演讲、吃炸鸡,以及去年秋天在首尔达成的一笔5万块GPU的交易。这一次,轮到东京了,围绕着机器人、供应链以及其底层的芯片。
Nvidia’s chief Jensen Huang spent two days — July 15 and 16 — in Tokyo, courting Japan’s industrial and chip-supply elite, weeks after a keynote 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 the chip-material suppliers powering Nvidia’s next generation of AI chips. His message was clear. Nvidia is targeting Japan’s factory floor, and many of the country’s biggest manufacturers are joining in. AI’s next chapter, Huang said, belongs to factory floors, robots, and machines, and he wants Japan to build it.
Thirty years ago, a $5 million Sega investment helped keep a near-bankrupt Nvidia afloat; today, Nvidia and Japan’s industrial giants need each other again — this time to build the physical-AI era, starting with these three projects:
Noetra — Japan’s sovereign-AI play. The country doesn’t want to run its factories and robots on American or Chinese AI. So, the government pulled together roughly 44 domestic firms, with SoftBank, Sony, NEC and Honda at the core, to build its own AI for robots, vehicles and factory floors. Tokyo is committing up to 1 trillion yen ($6.2 billion) over five years, a bet on homegrown “physical AI”, foundation models built to run machines. Japan wants to own the software brain. The hardware to build it, though, still comes from Nvidia. The U.S chip giant is building “a Vera Rubin AI factory”, a massive data center packed with its next-generation chips, expected to launch in 2028, with 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs, delivering 140 megawatts. Noetra will oversee the effort, with plans to build the data center. Noetra’s plan runs in three stages: a reasoning model heavy on Japanese-language skills starting in fiscal 2026; an omni-modal version handling text, images, video, and audio by 2028; and “Real-world Native AI” built to run robots by 2030, released to outside Noetra developers in phases.
The robotics coalition — Japan’s industrial giants line up behind Cosmos. Nvidia is targeting Japan’s factory floor, and many of the country’s top robotics and manufacturing players are signing on. 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-model effort Nvidia started in May with a handful of global AI labs. In Tokyo, Nvidia gave them a reason to commit, unveiling Cosmos 3 Edge, a version of the model that runs on its Jetson Thor chips inside the machines themselves. Some are already testing a shared control system; others, like Honda R&D and Omron, are building on the tools now. “The next frontier of AI is in the physical world, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan,” Huang said in the company’s statement. “Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it has the opportunity to reinvent it for the age of intelligent industries.”
**Toyota — cars and physical AI.**Toyota uses Nvidia chips across much of its stack. It committed its next-generation vehicles to Nvidia’s Drive platform at CES in January 2025; the newer work extends Nvidia into its manufacturing, where simulations are used to design production lines, into the software that runs its vehicles, and into systems that read road traffic. Toyota’s cars will run advanced driver assistance, 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.
Why it matters
Huang’s visit put physical AI at the center of Japan’s industrial strategy, and Tokyo is spending to back it. Facing a shrinking workforce, Japan wants 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040, backed by $65 billion in public and private physical-AI investment.
The longer game is bigger. Japan’s AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, aims to capturemore than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, a market Tokyo values at roughly ¥20 trillion, or about $133 billion. METI is funding a domestic foundation model to run the machines, and Noetra’s Nvidia-powered factory is where models of that scale, into the trillions of parameters, would be trained. The wager is that Japan’s factory-floor data and manufacturing base can do for physical AI
Underneath the industrial case is a sovereign one. As the U.S. and China pull ahead in large-scale AI, Tokyo wants its own data, its own compute, and less dependence on infrastructure it doesn’t control. Huang appeared on July 16 alongside trade minister Ryosei Akazawa at the government’s physical-AI launch, with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi joining by video. The Takaichi administration has made AI and semiconductors the centerpiece of a growth plan chasing ¥370 trillion ($2.3 trillion) in public and private investment by 2040. Noetra’s factory — which Nvidia bills as “the world’s first national AI infrastructure” — is the clearest bet yet. Japan’s push for independence, at least for now, rests on American chips.ndence runs on American silicon.
Working the whole room
In two days, Huang sat across from nearly every name that matters in Japanese tech — the CEOs of Toyota, Fanuc, Yaskawa, Fujitsu and Kawasaki over lunch, and dozens of supply-chain chiefs over skewers and whisky in a Kanda izakaya.
It’s the same playbook he ran weeks earlier — 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, the supply chain, and the chips underneath.