Jensen Huang’s Tokyo visit this week delivered two things the crowd outside a Kanda izakaya will remember: a ¥1 trillion ($6.1 billion) national AI infrastructure commitment and a handful of red bean buns pressed into outstretched hands.
The headline deal, announced on Thursday, is a partnership between Nvidia and NEC and the wider Noetra consortium to build what the companies are calling the world’s first national AI infrastructure for robotics. Noetra was formed by SoftBank, NEC, Sony, and Honda, and has since drawn investment from 44 additional companies and organisations.
The factory will be built using 382 Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, housing approximately 27,500 Nvidia Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs connected via Spectrum-X Ethernet. The system is designed to deliver 140 megawatts of data centre capacity, with construction scheduled to begin in April 2027 and operations expected to come online in June 2028, according to the NEC press release.
Funding for the project flows from the Japanese government’s FRONTia programme. Noetra and the national research institute AIST won a NEDO public tender on 30 June, securing ¥387.3 billion (roughly $2.4 billion) in first-year funding and up to ¥1 trillion (roughly $6.1 billion) over fiscal 2026 to 2030, Tom’s Hardware reported.
What Jensen Huang’s Tokyo Visit Means for Japan’s AI Ambitions
The Noetra factory sits within a broader national push. Japan’s AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, targets more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, a prize the government estimates at $133 billion, according to Tom’s Hardware. The factory is the first state-tendered machine in Japan’s AI build-out, distinct from earlier corporate and scientific projects including SoftBank’s Blackwell-based DGX supercomputer and FugakuNEXT, the $740 million RIKEN, Fujitsu, and Nvidia zetta-scale system due around 2030.
Noetra’s roadmap, as reported by Observer, sets out a staged expansion: Japanese-language understanding and reasoning comes first, followed by text, image, video, and audio capabilities in 2028. By 2030, the consortium aims to deploy what it calls ‘real-world native A.I.’ for robotics and autonomous machinery.
Huang appeared at a Physical AI Initiative event hosted by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry alongside Minister Ryosei Akazawa, and at a separate press conference with the presidents of Fujitsu, Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Kyodo News reported. Further partnerships announced during the visit included Hitachi beginning proof-of-concept testing for an autonomous factory using Nvidia technology and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries agreeing to co-develop a next-generation data centre cooling system, according to BigGo Finance.
‘Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution,’ Huang said, according to the Nvidia newsroom.
Offal Hotpot and Red Bean Buns: The After-Hours Itinerary
The formal schedule was not the only part of Jensen Huang’s Tokyo visit that drew attention. Huang visited a former Sega arcade in Akihabara to thank the gaming giant, whose $5 million lifeline he has said saved a struggling Nvidia in the 1990s.
That evening, Huang dined at Yakiton Sankichi, a chain bar popular for after-work drinks, where Japanese outlet Diamond Online reported he ate offal hotpot and a ‘baka-mori’, roughly translated as a ‘stupidly big’ mountain of fries. His tablemates included the top executives from Kioxia, Tokyo Electron, Shin-Etsu Chemical, Sumitomo Electric, Taiyo Yuden, and Ajinomoto, per Bloomberg.
When dinner finished, Huang emerged to a waiting crowd and pressed red bean buns into outstretched hands. The moment was characteristic of a pattern that has followed him across Asia: fried bean sauce noodles eaten on a Beijing pavement in May, after accompanying President Donald Trump’s state visit to China (‘It’s so good,’ he told onlookers), and earlier trips to street food spots in Vietnam, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
The next Nvidia AI factory announcement will tell us where he eats next. Japan’s manufacturing sector, for its part, now has a June 2028 production date to aim for.