Japan has formally launched Noetra, a national artificial-intelligence venture backed by SoftBank, NEC, Sony and Honda, that will develop homegrown multimodal foundation models for controlling robots and machines in the physical world. The government committed roughly 387.3 billion yen for fiscal 2026 as part of a five-year support package approaching 1 trillion yen.
June 30, 2026 · METI Physical-AI Program
Japan launches Noetra to build sovereign "physical AI"
Backed by SoftBank, NEC, Sony and Honda, the national venture will develop homegrown multimodal foundation models to control robots and machines in the real world — betting on factories over chatbots.
¥1T
Five-year state support envelope (approaching)
¥387.3B
Government funding committed for FY2026
27,500
NVIDIA AI chips being procured
40+
Companies expected to invest or take part
National robot deployment target
Up to 10 million robots across Japan by 2040
Model target
1T+
Trillion-parameter class ambition
Nursing · food & drink · logistics · manufacturing · infrastructure
The strategy
Multimodal models that act in the physical world
Text · Images · Video · Sensor data
→
Understand & predict environment
→
Act in factories, robots & infrastructure
Rather than chasing general-purpose language models led by the US and China, Noetra targets "physical AI" — feeding real operational data back into yearly model releases. A dedicated Sakai computing facility, among the world's largest, is planned around 2028.
Welcomed
On-the-ground use cases fed directly into development
Applies to domestic robots and factories
Reduces reliance on foreign models like NVIDIA's Cosmos
Cautioned
Heavy use of public funds has drawn criticism
No model released yet — evaluation limited
Credibility hinges on the first FY2026 release
The alliance
A broad industrial coalition spanning automotive, electronics, finance and logistics — coordinated via AIST with 14 institutions including the University of Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon and Yoshua Bengio, plus engineers from Preferred Networks.
First foundation model targeted within FY2026, with improved versions shipping each year. Results are intended to be opened broadly to Japanese companies.
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