Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spent two days in Tokyo (15–16 July 2026) meeting Japan's industrial and chip-supply leaders, securing agreements across the country's tech sector, including a national AI project, partnerships with major robotics firms and deals with chip-material suppliers. This matters because it signals Nvidia's push to extend AI beyond data centres and into factories, robots and machinery, positioning Japan as a key partner in what Huang calls the "physical AI" era, echoing the historic support Nvidia received from Sega three decades ago.

Three projects stood out: Noetra, a sovereign-AI initiative backed by roughly 44 Japanese firms including SoftBank, Sony, NEC and Honda, with the government committing up to 1 trillion yen (about $6.2 billion) over five years to build homegrown AI models for robots and factories, underpinned by an Nvidia-built data centre using Vera and Rubin chips due in 2028; a robotics coalition including Fanuc, Yaskawa, Kawasaki Heavy, Fujitsu, Hitachi and others adopting Nvidia's Cosmos models, with a new edge version unveiled for on-device use; and Toyota, which is expanding its existing Nvidia partnership into manufacturing simulation, vehicle software and traffic systems, while keeping a more cautious approach to autonomous driving than rivals such as Waymo and Tesla.