Japan and Nvidia Launch 27,500-GPU Noetra Sovereign AI Factory Backed by ¥1T Government Fund

Japan's newly formed Noetra Corp — a consortium of ~44 companies led by SoftBank, Sony, Honda, NEC and Toyota-backed Preferred Networks — will deploy 27,500 Nvidia Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs (382 NVL72 racks, 140MW) as the compute layer for METI's FRONTia Project, targeting sovereign multimodal foundation models for physical AI and robotics. Tokyo has committed ¥387.3B ($2.4B) through March 2027 within a ¥1T ($6B) five-year package; construction begins 2027 with operations targeted for June 2028. President Hironobu Tamba framed the effort as 'a genuine third option' beyond US and Chinese AI stacks, with Japan aiming for 30%+ of a ¥60T global robotics market by 2040.