METI will provide ¥387.3 billion (approx 16.2 billion yuan) as 2026 fiscal-year development commission fees to a new SoftBank-led company, Noetra, to develop a domestic AI foundation model. The support targets physical-AI R&D that combines robotics and AI to strengthen Japan’s manufacturing competitiveness. Noetra, formed around SoftBank, NEC, Honda and Sony, will focus on high-level Japanese-language understanding and reasoning and on multimodal foundation models that recognise images, video, a

METI will provide ¥387.3 billion (approx 16.2 billion yuan) as 2026 fiscal-year development commission fees to a new SoftBank-led company, Noetra, to develop a domestic AI foundation model. The support targets physical-AI R&D that combines robotics and AI to strengthen Japan’s manufacturing competitiveness. Noetra, formed around SoftBank, NEC, Honda and Sony, will focus on high-level Japanese-language understanding and reasoning and on multimodal foundation models that recognise images, video, audio and physical space. The project has been selected for support by NEDO.