Japan to buy Nvidia Rubin chips to build an AI for robots

Japan plans to purchase 27,500 Nvidia Rubin chips to develop a foundational AI model for robots, led by newly established Noetra with ¥387.3 billion in government funding. The initiative involves Sony, SoftBank, Toyota-backed Preferred Networks, and NEC, with a data center expected online by June 2028.

Japan is planning to buy 27,500 next-generation Rubin chips from Nvidia to build a homegrown foundational AI model for robots. Newly established Noetra, which has been allocated ¥387.3 billion $2.4 billion from government coffers through March of next year, said it will oversee the endeavor and build a roughly 140 megawatt data center. Dozens of companies including Sony Group, SoftBank, Toyota-backed Preferred Networks and NEC are helping to set up and operate Noetra. Noetra’s data center is slated to go online in June 2028. Its Rubin order, while sizable, is small compared with plans by Microsoft to eventually build data centers scaling hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin systems.