Japan Seeks a Comeback Through Physical AI; About 30 Manufacturers Consider Investing in AI Company

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TOKYO = Financial News, correspondent Seo Hye-jin] About 30 manufacturing companies, including Asahi Kasei, are reportedly considering investing in a Japanese artificial intelligence development project led by SoftBank Group Corp. The move suggests that participation is expanding beyond the major automakers and electronics companies already involved, reaching sectors such as chemicals and robotics.
The project’s main goal is to secure competitiveness in Physical AI, which autonomously controls robots and machinery by using data from manufacturing sites. While the United States and China lead the development of AI models, Japan aims to use production and technical data from its manufacturing sector as a differentiating factor.■ Ten companies to make initial investments next month; 30 companies considering participationAccording to Nihon Keizai Shimbun, or The Nikkei, on the 28th, about 30 companies, including Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Fujitsu, and major heavy industry and transportation firms, are considering investing in the company established by SoftBank Group Corp. for Japan AI-based Model Development. About 10 of them are expected to finalize their investment decisions next month. The investment amounts are likely to be relatively small, at several tens of millions of yen per company.
The core shareholders are SoftBank Group Corp., NEC Corporation, Honda, and Sony Group, each holding more than 10% of the shares. Japan's three megabanks, Nippon Steel Corporation, and Kobe Steel, Ltd. are also participating as small-scale investors.
Japan AI-based Model Development aims to integrate data across manufacturing, including materials, machine tools, and logistics, and build an AI foundation that can be used throughout the supply chain. The company plans to expand the range of decisions AI can make and pursue overall optimization.
The company plans to develop one of Japan's largest AI large language models by 2027. It is targeting a parameter scale of about 1 trillion.
\rBy 2029, it plans to evolve the system into multimodal AI capable of processing images, voice, and other data at the same time. In the early 2030s, it aims to expand further into a stage that can integrate and process physical-world data such as temperature, weight, and location.
The developed model will be opened to investing companies and used as a foundation for developing industry-specific AI and services.■ Building a 1 trillion yen data center\rSoftBank Group Corp. is building a large-scale AI data center on the site of the Sharp Sakai Plant, which it acquired in 2025. The facility is scheduled to begin full-scale operations in 2028 and will be equipped with computing infrastructure using about 100,000 NVIDIA H200 GPUs.
The total infrastructure investment is estimated at about 1 trillion yen. If the project is selected for a New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) program, the government will lead the infrastructure buildout while SoftBank Group Corp. handles operations.
\rThe project is based on the premise of building a training infrastructure that allows companies to safely use data together. With about 60% of global data believed to exist inside companies, combining it with manufacturing-site data is expected to make AI applications such as factory automation and autonomous control possible.
The Government of Japan is also placing more weight on industry-specific AI centered on manufacturing, rather than on full localization across all fields.
Meanwhile, competition over AI infrastructure is being led by global big tech companies. Four major U.S. tech firms, including Meta and Google, are expected to invest more than 100 trillion yen in AI infrastructure this year.
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sjmary@fnnews.com Seo Hye-jin Reporter