A consortium of NEC, Sony, Honda and SoftBank won the tender to run Japan's national FRONTia physical-AI program through 2030 — funding could reach ¥1 trillion ($6.1 billion) — on an Nvidia AI factory of 27,500 Rubin GPUs, a reliance on a US rival that critics have already questioned.
A consortium named Noetra Corp — grouping NEC, Sony, Honda and SoftBank Corp with backing from 44 other companies and organizations — has won Japan's tender to operate the national FRONTia physical-AI project through 2030.
Noetra prevailed in the bidding on June 30, 2026. Over the program's five-year span, funding could climb as high as ¥1 trillion, roughly $6.1 billion.
Nvidia supplies the computing base. Its Vera Rubin AI factory is set to run on 13,750 Vera CPUs together with 27,500 Rubin GPUs, and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is backing the tie-up joining Noetra with the US chipmaker.
Japan casts FRONTia as central to a self-controlled industrial AI ecosystem, meant to supply the computing capacity for building the sophisticated multimodal foundation models that power physical AI. Once the factory is complete, it is set to deliver Noetra's foundation models to model builders and businesses inside the country. Ryosei Akazawa, who leads the trade ministry, called the project a foundational element of the framework Japan is assembling to support AI in the physical world.
Physical AI — the blending of artificial intelligence with tangible equipment such as robots, vehicles and factory machinery — has so far been unable to expand at the pace of generative AI built on large language models. By its own account, FRONTia is the first national AI infrastructure anywhere created specifically to serve it.
For all the sovereign framing, the arrangement has drawn objections. Interested observers have faulted Noetra and the government for a lack of openness about the finances, and have flagged Nvidia's role as a partner, since the American company is seen as a strategic rival.