Japan's government will fund Noetra, a new AI consortium led by SoftBank, Sony, NEC, and Honda, to build a national foundation model in partnership with the AIST research institute. The project receives ¥387.3 billion ($2.4 billion) this fiscal year, with funding potentially reaching ¥1 trillion ($6.1 billion) over five years, subject to annual "stage-gate" reviews.
The multimodal model will combine language, images, video, audio, and sensor data so robots can interpret physical environments rather than run pre-programmed motions. Noetra plans to draw in roughly 40 additional companies across manufacturing, logistics, telecom, and finance, and will lean on data from elder care, disaster response, and the Fukushima decommissioning site rather than compete head-on with general-purpose models like GPT or Claude.
The push is part of a broader government plan targeting 10 million AI-equipped robots deployed across 18 sectors by 2040, as Japan looks to offset its shrinking workforce with physical AI.