Overview
- Noetra won the FRONTia tender on June 30 to run Japan’s national AI program and will lead a consortium of about 44 companies to build a 140 MW 'AI factory' for physical AI.
- During Jensen Huang’s visit to Tokyo on Wednesday and Thursday, Nvidia and Noetra publicized plans for the facility to use roughly 27,500 Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs in a Vera Rubin rack architecture.
- METI has committed conditional funding of up to ¥1 trillion over five years to support the program, with a staged roadmap that targets omni‑modal models by 2028 and robot‑ready 'Real‑world Native AI' by 2030.
- Nvidia says it has begun shipping Vera CPUs and Vera Rubin systems to select labs, and will supply a full stack including Spectrum‑X networking, BlueField DPUs, and DSX software to operate the site.
- Observers warn of risks including high energy demand, concentrated vendor dependence on Nvidia, limited financial transparency, and the technical and schedule challenges of deploying national‑scale compute.