Japan’s government selected SoftBank-backed Noetra to build a national AI model for robots, committing up to 1 trillion yen ($2.3 billion) in public funding over five years. The consortium includes 44 Japanese corporations—Honda, Sony, SoftBank—pooling resources to ensure Japan does not fall behind the U.S. and China. Noetra won a competitive tender alongside AIST, a national research institute. The project runs from fiscal 2026 to 2030, with a roadmap to build a reasoning model this year, evolve into an omni-modal model by 2028, and achieve real-world native Physical AI by 2030. The core product is a multimodal foundation model combining language, images, video, and sensor data. Nvidia is involved in GPU supply, and a planned AI data center with 27,500 Rubin GPUs will begin construction in April 2027, with operations starting June 2028. Japan’s endgame is deploying 10 million AI-enabled robots by 2040, a response to demographic collapse and labor shortages in agriculture, construction, and elder care. If Noetra succeeds, Japan regains relevance in the AI race; if it stalls, Japan faces permanent dependency on U.S. and Chinese AI platforms.