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TechNvidia and Japan's Noetra Consortium to Build World's First National AI Infrastructure with 140MW Rubin AI Factory
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Nvidia announced a partnership with Japan's Noetra Corp. to build a 140-megawatt AI factory housing 27,500 Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs, forming the compute foundation for FRONTia, Japan's state-funded physical AI program. The facility will use Vera Rubin NVL72 racks on Nvidia's DSX platform with Spectrum-X Ethernet, training open multimodal foundation models for robotics, digital twins, and industrial automation. Noetra is a consortium founded by SoftBank, Sony, NEC, and Honda, with investment from 44 organizations. The project won a NEDO public tender with ¥387.3 billion ($2.4 billion) in first-year funding and up to ¥1 trillion ($6.1 billion) over five years, subject to annual reviews. Hardware costs alone are estimated between $1.9 billion and $2.7 billion. The roadmap targets a reasoning foundation model by fiscal 2026, an omni-modal model by fiscal 2028, and real-world native AI by fiscal 2030. This is the first state-tendered national AI infrastructure, distinct from corporate or scientific machines, supporting Japan's goal to capture over 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040.
Source report
Nvidia today announced a collaboration with Japan's Noetra Corp. to construct a 140-megawatt AI factory powered by 27,500 Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs. The facility will serve as the compute foundation for FRONTia, the Japanese government's state-funded physical AI program.
The factory will be built using Vera Rubin NVL72 racks on Nvidia's DSX reference platform, connected via Spectrum-X Ethernet. It will train open multimodal foundation models for robotics, digital twins, and industrial automation, with pretrained weights shared broadly with domestic developers.
"Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.
Hardware and Cost Breakdown
The chip counts divide exactly into 382 Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, each housing:
- 72 Rubin GPUs
- 36 Vera CPUs
Neither company disclosed the project's total cost, but VR200 NVL72 systems are currently quoted at $5 million to $7 million per rack, placing the rack hardware alone between $1.9 billion and $2.7 billion. Morgan Stanley estimates Nvidia will charge $55,000 per Rubin GPU in volume, pricing the GPU silicon at roughly $1.5 billion before memory, networking, and cooling.
Timeline and Deployment
No deployment timeline was provided in the announcement. However, Rubin racks are expected to reach volume production in the second half of this year. Nvidia noted the facility will support trillion-parameter model training "as the AI factory expands," suggesting a phased ramp.
About Noetra and FRONTia
Noetra is a new consortium founded by SoftBank Corp., Sony, NEC, and Honda, with investment from 44 companies and organizations, according to a press release from NEC.
Noetra and the national research institute AIST won a NEDO public tender on June 30 to operate the FRONTia project from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2030, with:
- ¥387.3 billion (roughly $2.4 billion) in first-year funding
- Up to ¥1 trillion (roughly $6.1 billion) over five years
Funding beyond the first two years is subject to annual stage-gate reviews, so the full amount is not guaranteed.
Roadmap
Per NEC, Noetra's roadmap targets:
- Fiscal 2026: A reasoning foundation model
- Fiscal 2028: An omni-modal model processing text, images, video, and audio
- Fiscal 2030: "Real-world native AI" capable of spatial awareness
Strategic Context
The AI factory follows:
- SoftBank's Blackwell-based DGX supercomputer, announced in 2024
- FugakuNEXT, the $740 million RIKEN, Fujitsu, and Nvidia zetta-scale system due around 2030
This is the first facility that is state-tendered national infrastructure, rather than a corporate or scientific machine.
Japan's AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, targets more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040 — an opportunity the government estimates at $133 billion.
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Nvidia and Japan's Noetra Consortium to Build World's First National AI Infrastructure with 140MW Rubin AI Factory