Nvidia's $500 Billion+ Asia AI Blitz: Every Major Deal in Japan and South Korea (2026)

• 13,750 Vera CPUs
• 27,500 Rubin GPUs
• 140 megawatts of data center capacity

The project is backed by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and is designed to provide the computing foundation for Japan's FRONTia Project, strengthening the country's ecosystem across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and more .

Broad Industrial Partnerships

Beyond the Noetra factory, Huang announced expanded collaborations with Japanese giants across robotics, healthcare, banking, manufacturing, automotive, quantum computing, and gaming . A specific partnership with Toyota was highlighted for developing physical AI in manufacturing, including models for the Woven City traffic control system . Nvidia also signed Toyota, Fanuc, Kioxia, and five other Japanese industrial heavyweights into its Physical AI Coalition .

"Build-a-Claw" Developer Initiative

Nvidia hosted events for Japanese developers to build AI-powered robotics applications on its platform, encouraging hands-on experimentation with physical AI models .

Japan's Government: 10 Million AI Robots by 2040

On June 30, 2026, METI released a revised AI Robotics Strategy with an official target of introducing approximately 10 million AI-equipped robots across 18 sectors by 2040 . The sectors now include manufacturing, nursing care, food service, logistics, healthcare, agriculture, disaster response, and infrastructure maintenance .

The strategy is directly tied to the Noetra/Nvidia national AI platform, which will supply the AI foundation for these robots . Japan aims to capture more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, an opportunity estimated at $133 billion . The government also committed up to ¥1 trillion (~$6.1 billion) over five years to fund the initiative .

South Korea: $500 Billion+ Partnership with SK Group

On July 24, 2026, Nvidia and SK Group signed letters of intent for a $500 billion-plus comprehensive partnership covering two pillars :

• 2-gigawatt AI factory in South Korea to be built by SK Telecom, powered by Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips and SK Hynix's HBM4 high-bandwidth memory. The data center is expected online by 2027 .
• Next-generation HBM memory co-development between Nvidia and SK Hynix to secure long-term high-bandwidth memory supply for AI training, AI agents, and physical AI applications .

The deal was announced at the AI Summit in San Francisco alongside South Korean President Lee Jae-myung's U.S. visit . SK Hynix is already Nvidia's largest memory supplier .

South Korea: $10 Billion Investment with Naver and Brookfield

On July 24–25, 2026, Nvidia and U.S. private equity firm Brookfield committed a combined $10 billion investment in Naver Corp. to scale Naver's multi-tenant Nvidia DSX AI factory :

• The investment will expand Naver's AI data center from 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts by 2028 .
• Naver founder Lee Hae-jin said the funds will accelerate Naver's push to become a global AI infrastructure business .
• The announcement coincided with President Lee's U.S. visit and a gathering of South Korean and U.S. AI industry leaders .

Summary Table of Major Deals

Key Takeaways

• Physical AI is the through-line. Both Japan and South Korea are building their AI strategies around physical applications — robots, factories, autonomous systems — rather than purely large language models .
• Sovereign AI infrastructure is a national priority. Japan's Noetra consortium and South Korea's SK Group deal both aim to build domestic AI compute that doesn't rely on U.S. or Chinese cloud platforms .
• The scale is unprecedented. The combined value of these announcements — over $500 billion from SK Group alone, plus $10 billion from Naver, plus tens of billions in Japanese government backing — represents the largest AI infrastructure buildout ever announced in a single quarter.