Fanuc Corporation

Movements to form corporate alliances across different industries are gathering pace, centered on physical AI, in which robots and automobiles move autonomously through artificial intelligence. Five companies including the herbal medicine maker Tsumura and the machinery trading firm Yamazen have recently opened a data collection center for physical AI in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture, where up to 40 robots will repeatedly perform tasks to train robots capable of acting autonomously. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Yaskawa Electric, Japan's three major robot makers, are partnering with Fujitsu and the American company Nvidia, while about 20 companies including Kyocera, Kobe Steel, and the software developer Alm are pooling data and expertise with the aim of automating the processing techniques of skilled engineers. Noetra, in which 44 companies including SoftBank and NEC participate, is independently developing an AI foundation model that will serve as the brain of physical AI, aiming for practical application in fiscal 2030, and the government has decided to provide more than 380 billion yen in support for the project this fiscal year.

Palladyne AI Corp. and FANUC America have announced a strategic collaboration to advance intelligent robotic automation, combining FANUC America's industrial robot portfolio with Palladyne AI's physical AI software platform, Palladyne IQ. The partnership aims to simplify deployment, increase adaptability, and expand automation across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics applications. Key initiatives include optimizing Palladyne IQ on FANUC platforms, developing AI-driven motion planning and adaptive robot behavior, and creating standardized deployment workflows for system integrators and end users. The companies will also focus on teleoperation, human-assisted learning, and simulation to accelerate deployment and validate customer use cases. This collaboration addresses skilled labor shortages and productivity pressures by enabling faster, more intelligent robot deployment and greater return on investment.

Nvidia has signed seven Japanese industrial giants into its new physical AI coalition, locking in a massive, long-lived stream of demand for its chips and software. Companies including Fujitsu, FANUC, Yaskawa Electric, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Hitachi, NEC, SoftBank, Sony, and Kubota intend to build on Nvidia's Cosmos, Isaac, Metropolis, and Jetson platforms as part of a Cosmos Coalition focused on physical AI. Nvidia is also partnering with Noetra, a Japanese AI consortium backed by Sony, SoftBank, Honda, and dozens of other firms, to build what it calls the world's first national infrastructure for physical AI, centered on a Vera Rubin AI factory with 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs delivering about 140 megawatts of compute capacity. Japan's industry ministry expects this to help the country capture 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government plans to mobilize more than 370 trillion yen, or 2.3 trillion dollars, in combined public and private investment by 2040 across physical AI, semiconductors, and data centers. Noetra's own roadmap calls for roughly 1 trillion yen, or 6.3 billion dollars, of sovereign AI spending over five years to develop domestic foundation models for robots and industrial AI.

Nvidia has expanded its AI footprint in Japan with a national AI factory partnership and new alliances with Japanese leaders across robotics, industrial automation, automotive, and smart cities, including Toyota, Fanuc, Yaskawa, Sony, SoftBank, and Mitsubishi Heavy. The company introduced Cosmos 3 Edge and new Metropolis libraries aimed at deploying agentic AI on devices and across real-world infrastructure. Nvidia, trading at $207.4, has returned 9.8% year to date and 20.0% over the past year. The Japan-focused push adds a real-world deployment angle alongside the better-known data center narrative, positioning Nvidia as a core platform across factories, vehicles, and cities.

Nvidia is widening its reach across Japan's largest industries. During a visit to Tokyo, CEO Jensen Huang announced partnerships covering robotics, health care, banking, manufacturing, automobiles, quantum computing and gaming. Japanese companies including FANUC, Sony, Hitachi, Kubota and SoftBank plan to work with Nvidia on physical AI models for robots and industrial systems. In health care, several drugmakers are using Nvidia's BioNeMo platform for drug discovery, while Canon and Fujifilm introduced medical imaging systems built with Nvidia technology. Toyota is expanding its work with Nvidia on driver-assistance software, factory simulations and traffic systems, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui are building AI infrastructure for banking, and RIKEN is preparing Blackwell-powered supercomputers for scientific and quantum research.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a broad slate of AI products, partnerships, and customer deployments at the company's Japan AI event in Tokyo on July 15. The announcements spanned physical AI, healthcare, financial services, quantum computing, automotive, manufacturing, and gaming, highlighting Nvidia's push to position its technologies at the forefront of Japan's next-generation AI infrastructure. In physical AI and robotics, Nvidia launched Cosmos 3 Edge for on-device vision reasoning, and companies including FANUC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Kubota, NEC, SoftBank, Sony Group, and Yaskawa Electric plan to join the Nvidia Cosmos Coalition to develop open physical AI models. In healthcare, Astellas Pharma, Eisai, Daiichi Sankyo, Ono Pharmaceutical, and Takeda Pharmaceutical are deploying Nvidia BioNeMo for AI-powered drug discovery, while Canon and Fujifilm introduced Nvidia-powered next-generation CT systems, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries is advancing AI-enabled surgical and hospital robots. In financial services, Mizuho Financial plans Japan's largest on-premises AI factory for banking, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial has deployed an AI factory through Japan Research Institute, and Rakuten Bank is developing AI transaction foundation models using Nvidia Agent Toolkit. Huang emphasized that the next wave of AI will be physical AI—robots, factories, vehicles, and industrial systems that can perceive, reason, and act in the real world—and said Japan's leadership in robotics, manufacturing, and precision engineering positions it to play a leading role in this transition.

Fujitsu announced it has begun exploring business opportunities in the physical AI field together with Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. By incorporating NVIDIA technology, the companies aim to build a sovereign AI foundation that bridges the digital and physical worlds.

US semiconductor giant Nvidia announced on the 16th, coinciding with CEO Jensen Huang's visit to Japan, a series of expanded partnerships with Japanese companies including Fujitsu and Toyota Motor. With Fujitsu, it will jointly explore commercialization in areas such as factories, retail, and logistics, together with Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. It will provide technical cooperation for Toyota Motor's Woven City test course, and collaborate with Hitachi on realizing a system that integrates and controls entire sites such as factories and power plants. These initiatives will promote the social implementation of physical AI, which can be utilized for robot operations and other applications.

Vention and FANUC America have expanded their collaboration to integrate FANUC's industrial robot portfolio into Vention's AI-powered automation platform. The unified platform now supports multiple FANUC robot families, including CRX collaborative robots, LR Mate industrial robots, LR-10iA series, M-710iD series, and M-20iD series, enabling manufacturers to design, simulate, deploy, and operate both collaborative and industrial robotic applications from a single digital environment. The system uses goal-driven programming, where operators define start and end targets and the platform automatically generates optimal collision-free motion paths, reducing commissioning complexity. Live demonstrations at Automate 2026 feature a FANUC CRX10iA collaborative robot and a FANUC LR Mate industrial robot powered by Vention's MachineMotion AI and MachineLogic software.

General Motors has installed dozens of collaborative robots at its Detroit-Hamtramck Factory Zero plant, the same facility where over 1,000 workers have been laid off this year. GM spokesman Kevin Kelly said the Fanuc-made cobots are part of a broader push to bring advanced technology into operations, improving safety and ergonomics while keeping the plant flexible and competitive. UAW Local 22 president James Cotton, who toured the plant and estimated around 50 new cobots, said the union is disgusted and that manpower is being taken away. The move raises tensions ahead of 2028 contract negotiations, as automation reduces labor hours per vehicle by 50% to 70% since the 1980s, according to Wayne State University professor Marick Masters.