What to watch for after Jensen Huang’s Japan visit
What to watch for after Jensen Huang’s Japan visit
黄仁勋访日之后：值得关注的重点
Nvidia’s chief Jensen Huang spent two days — July 15 and 16 — in Tokyo, courting Japan’s industrial and chip-supply elite, weeks after a keynote in Taiwan, and months after a visit to South Korea. He left with deals spanning Japan’s entire tech ecosystem: a national AI factory, partnerships with the country’s leading robotics companies, and agreements with the chip-material suppliers powering Nvidia’s next generation of AI chips. 英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋于7月15日至16日在东京度过了两天，与日本工业界和芯片供应链的精英们进行了深入交流。此前，他刚在台湾发表了主题演讲，并于数月前访问了韩国。此行他收获颇丰，达成的协议涵盖了日本整个科技生态系统：包括一座国家级AI工厂、与日本领先机器人公司的合作，以及与为英伟达下一代AI芯片提供支持的芯片材料供应商签署的协议。
His message was clear. Nvidia is targeting Japan’s factory floor, and many of the country’s biggest manufacturers are joining in. AI’s next chapter, Huang said, belongs to factory floors, robots, and machines, and he wants Japan to build it. Thirty years ago, a $5 million Sega investment helped keep a near-bankrupt Nvidia afloat; today, Nvidia and Japan’s industrial giants need each other again — this time to build the physical-AI era, starting with these three projects: 他的信息非常明确：英伟达正瞄准日本的工厂车间，而日本许多大型制造商也纷纷加入。黄仁勋表示，AI的下一个篇章属于工厂车间、机器人和机器，他希望由日本来构建这一篇章。三十年前，世嘉（Sega）的一笔500万美元投资帮助濒临破产的英伟达渡过了难关；今天，英伟达与日本工业巨头再次需要彼此——这一次是为了共同开启“物理AI”时代，并从以下三个项目开始：
Noetra — Japan’s sovereign-AI play.
Noetra——日本的主权AI布局
The country doesn’t want to run its factories and robots on American or Chinese AI. So, the government pulled together roughly 44 domestic firms, with SoftBank, Sony, NEC and Honda at the core, to build its own AI for robots, vehicles and factory floors. Tokyo is committing up to 1 trillion yen ($6.2 billion) over five years, a bet on homegrown “physical AI”, foundation models built to run machines. Japan wants to own the software brain. The hardware to build it, though, still comes from Nvidia. 日本不希望其工厂和机器人运行在美国或中国的AI系统上。因此，日本政府集结了约44家本土企业，以软银、索尼、NEC和本田为核心，旨在为机器人、汽车和工厂车间构建自主AI。东京计划在五年内投入高达1万亿日元（约62亿美元），押注本土研发的“物理AI”，即专为驱动机器而构建的基础模型。日本希望掌握软件大脑，但构建这些大脑所需的硬件，依然来自英伟达。
The U.S chip giant is building “a Vera Rubin AI factory”, a massive data center packed with its next-generation chips, expected to launch in 2028, with 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs, delivering 140 megawatts. Noetra will oversee the effort, with plans to build the data center. Noetra’s plan runs in three stages: a reasoning model heavy on Japanese-language skills starting in fiscal 2026; an omni-modal version handling text, images, video, and audio by 2028; and “Real-world Native AI” built to run robots by 2030, released to outside Noetra developers in phases. 这家美国芯片巨头正在建设一座“Vera Rubin AI工厂”，这是一个配备其下一代芯片的大型数据中心，预计于2028年投入使用，将搭载13,750颗Vera CPU和27,500颗Rubin GPU，功耗达140兆瓦。Noetra将负责监督该项目并计划建设该数据中心。Noetra的计划分为三个阶段：从2026财年开始，推出侧重日语能力的推理模型；到2028年，推出能够处理文本、图像、视频和音频的全模态版本；到2030年，推出专为驱动机器人而构建的“现实世界原生AI”，并分阶段向Noetra以外的开发者开放。
The robotics coalition — Japan’s industrial giants line up behind Cosmos.
机器人联盟——日本工业巨头支持Cosmos平台
Nvidia is targeting Japan’s factory floor, and many of the country’s top robotics and manufacturing players are signing on. Fanuc, Yaskawa, Kawasaki Heavy, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Sony, SoftBank, Kubota and robotics group AIRoA say they plan to build on Nvidia’s Cosmos models, an open-model effort Nvidia started in May with a handful of global AI labs. In Tokyo, Nvidia gave them a reason to commit, unveiling Cosmos 3 Edge, a version of the model that runs on its Jetson Thor chips inside the machines themselves. 英伟达正瞄准日本的工厂车间，许多日本顶尖的机器人和制造企业纷纷加入。发那科（Fanuc）、安川电机（Yaskawa）、川崎重工、富士通、日立、NEC、索尼、软银、久保田以及机器人组织AIRoA均表示，计划基于英伟达的Cosmos模型进行开发。Cosmos是英伟达于5月与多家全球AI实验室共同启动的一项开源模型计划。在东京，英伟达通过发布Cosmos 3 Edge——一个可以在机器内部的Jetson Thor芯片上运行的模型版本——为这些企业提供了加入的理由。
Some are already testing a shared control system; others, like Honda R&D and Omron, are building on the tools now. “The next frontier of AI is in the physical world, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan,” Huang said in the company’s statement. “Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it has the opportunity to reinvent it for the age of intelligent industries.” 一些企业已经在测试共享控制系统；而本田研发部门和欧姆龙等公司也已开始基于这些工具进行开发。黄仁勋在公司声明中表示：“AI的下一个前沿是物理世界，这对日本来说是千载难逢的机会。日本发明了现代制造业，现在，它有机会在智能工业时代重塑制造业。”
Toyota — cars and physical AI.
丰田——汽车与物理AI
Toyota uses Nvidia chips across much of its stack. It committed its next-generation vehicles to Nvidia’s Drive platform at CES in January 2025; the newer work extends Nvidia into its manufacturing, where simulations are used to design production lines, into the software that runs its vehicles, and into systems that read road traffic. Toyota’s cars will run advanced driver assistance, which steers and brakes but still requires a driver, a more conservative approach than Waymo and Tesla, which are developing systems that rely less on a human driver. 丰田在其大部分技术栈中都使用了英伟达的芯片。在2025年1月的CES展会上，丰田承诺将其下一代汽车接入英伟达的Drive平台；最新的合作将英伟达的技术扩展到了丰田的制造环节（利用模拟技术设计生产线）、运行车辆的软件以及读取道路交通信息的系统中。丰田汽车将运行高级驾驶辅助系统，该系统可以进行转向和制动，但仍需要驾驶员操作。这比Waymo和特斯拉那种减少对人类驾驶员依赖的系统开发路径更为保守。
Why it matters
为什么这很重要
Huang’s visit put physical AI at the center of Japan’s industrial strategy, and Tokyo is spending to back it. Facing a shrinking workforce, Japan wants 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040, backed by $65 billion in public and private physical-AI investment. The longer game is bigger. Japan’s AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, aims to capture more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, a market Tokyo values at roughly ¥20 trillion, or about $133 billion. 黄仁勋的访问将“物理AI”置于日本工业战略的核心，而东京正投入资金予以支持。面对劳动力萎缩，日本希望到2040年在18个行业部署1000万台配备AI的机器人，并为此提供650亿美元的公共和私人物理AI投资。更长远的布局则更为宏大：日本于3月发布的《AI机器人战略》旨在到2040年占据全球AI机器人市场30%以上的份额，东京预计该市场价值约为20万亿日元（约1330亿美元）。
METI is funding a domestic foundation model to run the machines, and Noetra’s Nvidia-powered factory is where models of that scale, into the trillions of parameters, would be trained. The wager is that Japan’s factory-floor data and manufacturing base can do for physical AI what the internet did for software. Underneath the industrial case is a sovereign one. As the U.S. and China pull ahead in large-scale AI, Tokyo wants its own data, its own compute, and less dependence on infrastructure it doesn’t control. 日本经济产业省（METI）正在资助一个用于驱动机器的本土基础模型，而Noetra的英伟达驱动工厂正是训练这些万亿参数规模模型的场所。其赌注在于，日本的工厂车间数据和制造基础能够为物理AI带来互联网对软件行业那样的变革。在工业考量之下，还有主权层面的考量。随着美国和中国在大规模AI领域领先，东京希望拥有自己的数据、自己的算力，并减少对不可控基础设施的依赖。
Huang appeared on July 16 alongside trade minister Ryosei Akazawa at the government’s physical-AI launch, with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi joining by video. The Takaichi administration has made AI and semiconductors the centerpiece of a growth plan chasing ¥370 trillion ($2.3 trillion) in public and private investment by 2040. Noetra’s factory — which Nvidia bills as “the world’s first national AI infrastructure” — is the clearest bet yet. Japan’s push for independence, at least for now, rests on American chips. 7月16日，黄仁勋与日本经济产业大臣赤泽亮正共同出席了政府的物理AI启动仪式，高市早苗首相通过视频连线参加。高市早苗政府已将AI和半导体作为增长计划的核心，目标是在2040年前吸引370万亿日元（约2.3万亿美元）的公共和私人投资。Noetra的工厂——被英伟达称为“全球首个国家级AI基础设施”——是目前最明确的赌注。日本对自主权的追求，至少在目前，仍建立在美国芯片之上。
Working the whole room
全面布局
In two days, Huang sat across from nearly every name that matters in Japanese tech — the CEOs of Toyota, Fanuc, Yaskawa, Fujitsu and Kawasaki over lunch, and dozens of supply-chain chiefs over skewers and whisky in a Kanda izakaya. It’s the same playbook he ran weeks earlier — a homecoming keynote in Taiwan, fried chicken, and a 50,000-GPU deal in Seoul last fall. This time, it was Tokyo’s turn, with the robots, the supply chain, and the chips underneath. 在两天的时间里，黄仁勋与日本科技界几乎所有重要人物进行了会面——午餐时与丰田、发那科、安川电机、富士通和川崎重工的首席执行官们交谈，并在神田的一家居酒屋里与数十位供应链负责人边吃烤串边喝威士忌。这与他几周前的策略如出一辙——在台湾发表返乡主题演讲、吃炸鸡，以及去年秋天在首尔达成的5万颗GPU交易。这一次，轮到了东京，重点则是机器人、供应链以及底层的芯片。