Japan Launches Consortium to Develop AI Models with a Trillion Parameters for Robotics
Four Japanese corporations—SoftBank, NEC, Sony, and Honda—have established Japan AI Foundation Model Development. The new company is developing foundational AI models with a trillion parameters, focused on embodied AI. This includes controlling robots, autonomous systems, and industrial processes. Each founding company owns more than a 10% stake, and negotiations are underway with additional investors for minority shares. The goal is to outpace competitors from the USA and China in the embodied AI segment, where Japan leverages its strengths in robotics and manufacturing.
Development of the base models falls to SoftBank and NEC. Experts from Preferred Networks in Tokyo, known for their deep neural network expertise, are joining the project. Sony will integrate the models into gaming systems, consumer electronics, and semiconductor technologies. Honda will apply them to autopilots and robotics. The company has a staff of 100 AI engineers led by an executive director from SoftBank. Initial deployments are expected by 2030.
Investors and Government Support
Nippon Steel, Kobe Steel, MUFG Bank, SMBC, and Mizuho have joined the consortium. These players provide funding and access to industrial use cases. The AI models are planned for distribution among Japanese companies, with potential scaling to factory robot control.
The company will apply to NEDO—a government agency for new technology development. The AI support program starts in fiscal year 2026 for five years with a budget of ¥1 trillion (approximately $6.3 billion). This will accelerate R&D in large models for the real world.
Key aspects of the consortium:
- Model scale: a trillion parameters for embodied AI tasks.
- Application focus: robots, autopilots, precision manufacturing.
- Team: engineers from Preferred Networks + 100 specialists.
- Investors: Japan's industrial giants and banks.
- Government funding: up to ¥1 trillion via NEDO.
SoftBank's Parallel Strategies and Market Context
SoftBank is combining consortium participation with global investments. Recently, the holding secured a $40 billion loan for $30 billion investments in OpenAI following a $110 billion round at an $840 billion valuation. This highlights diversification: chat models versus physical AI.
Japan is betting on the next stage of AI development—the shift from language models to systems interacting with the physical world. The country has a strong foundation: leadership in automotive (Honda), robotics (Fanuc, Yaskawa), and electronics (Sony). Such models require integrating sensors, computer vision, and reinforcement learning for tasks like object manipulation or navigation in dynamic environments.
Technical challenges include processing multimodal data (video, LIDAR, tactile sensors) and fine-tuning on real-world trajectories. Preferred Networks will contribute experience from Chainer and MN-3 for distributed training on clusters.
What Matters
- The consortium focuses exclusively on physical AI, skipping the LLM race for chatbots.
- A trillion parameters will provide capacity for complex robotics tasks.
- Integration with NEDO ensures long-term funding of $6.3 billion.
- SoftBank is balancing investments in OpenAI and Japan's national project.
- Initial applications by 2030, emphasizing industrial robots and autopilots.
The project positions Japan as a leader in embodied AI, where domain knowledge in mechanics and control is needed alongside compute.
— Editorial Team
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