Nvidia announces over $500B in AI deals across Japan and South Korea

Nvidia ↘ 4.27% CEO Jensen Huang spent the past two weeks courting Asia's industrial heavyweights, forging partnerships in Japan and South Korea that aim to embed artificial intelligence into factories, robots, and data centers at unprecedented scale.

Japan's Physical AI Coalition Takes Shape

During a two-day visit to Tokyo in mid-July, Huang met with leaders of Toyota, Fujitsu, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Kioxia, pitching Japan as a prime destination for what Nvidia calls "physical AI" — technology that allows machines to perceive and act in the real world. Nvidia unveiled a new world model called Cosmos 3 Edge during the visit and announced a coalition of Japanese industrial giants that will build on a shared physical AI platform, with the first phase of collaboration expected later this year.youtube+2

"This is the big promise of physical AI — to fuse the mechatronics expertise of Japan and the breakthroughs of" artificial intelligence, Huang said during a presentation in Tokyo. The coalition also includes Hitachi and Yaskawa, with the group aiming to wire Japan's factories onto one unified platform by March 2027.metaintro+2

South Korea: A $500 Billion-Plus AI Infrastructure Push

In South Korea, Nvidia announced a $500 billion-plus initiative with SK Group on July 25 at the AI Summit in San Francisco. SK Telecom ↗ 3.46% will build a 2-gigawatt Vera Rubin DSX AI factory to serve global compute demand, while SK hynix and Nvidia will co-develop next-generation AI memory including HBM.linkedin+1

Separately, Nvidia, Naver, and Brookfield ↗ 3.84% announced plans the same day to invest $10 billion in expanding Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure. Nvidia will contribute $1 billion to Naver, conditional on the company securing at least $9 billion in committed financing from Brookfield. The project will expand a Naver data center in Sejong from 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts by 2028, with a long-term vision of reaching 1 gigawatt.biz.chosun+2

Japan's Government Bets on Robotics Sovereignty

Underpinning Nvidia's Japan push is a broader government strategy. Tokyo announced a revised national robotics plan aiming to deploy 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040 and capture over 30 percent of the global AI robotics market. The effort is anchored by Noetra, a consortium of 44 companies — including SoftBank, Sony, Honda ↗ 0.17%, and NEC — tasked with developing Japan's first homegrown multimodal foundation model, with the government committing up to ¥1 trillion over five years.japantimes+2