NVIDIA and Japan Accelerate the Next Era of AI Innovation Across Healthcare, Finance, Science, Automotive and Gaming
Japan has long been recognized as a global leader in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing and technology. Today, the country is entering a new phase of innovation by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across critical industries with NVIDIA technologies at its core. From AI-driven drug discovery and autonomous surgical systems to financial intelligence, quantum computing, smart mobility and next-generation gaming, Japanese organizations are adopting NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platforms to transform research, business operations and public services.
Revolutionizing Healthcare and Drug Discovery
Japan’s pharmaceutical industry is embracing AI to accelerate drug development, reduce research timelines and improve treatment outcomes. The Tokyo-1 AI drug discovery consortium, operated by Xeureka, has expanded to include major pharmaceutical companies such as Astellas, Daiichi Sankyo, Ono Pharmaceuticals and Eisai. These organizations are using NVIDIA BioNeMo, an AI platform designed specifically for life sciences, to enhance molecular research, virtual screening and therapeutic discovery.
Astellas has implemented nearly the entire BioNeMo portfolio and utilizes the BioNeMo Agent Toolkit, enabling autonomous AI agents to perform complex scientific tasks including molecular analysis, biological modeling and research assistance. Ono Pharmaceuticals is leveraging NVIDIA’s Boltz-2 model to streamline internal drug discovery, while Daiichi Sankyo performs massive virtual screening projects and accelerates large-scale data processing using NVIDIA RAPIDS. Xeureka also integrates BioNeMo to provide researchers with flexible AI models for multiple discovery programs.
Emerging biotech companies are further expanding AI capabilities. SyntheticGestalt introduced ZAO, a molecular AI foundation model capable of accurately representing molecules in four-dimensional space to improve drug discovery accuracy, along with KOYA, a generative AI model that designs new high-affinity drug candidates aligned with researcher objectives. Together, these tools allow scientists and AI agents to evaluate, optimize and generate potential therapeutic molecules more efficiently.
Biomy is developing an advanced virtual cell foundation model using one of Japan’s largest clinical cancer datasets. By combining NVIDIA’s single-cell RAPIDS with Nemotron-powered AI agents, the company significantly accelerates transcriptomics analysis while enabling AI to autonomously design and coordinate complex virtual experiments for future drug development.
Takeda has also partnered with Boltz to integrate biomolecular AI models across its research organization, enabling faster protein structure prediction, molecular affinity estimation and generative molecular design. NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure accelerates these workloads using optimized computational libraries.
AI-Powered Robotics Transform Healthcare
Beyond pharmaceutical research, Japan is applying AI to modernize hospital operations and surgical care.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries is expanding its portfolio of healthcare robots, including surgical support systems, hospital transport robots and nursing assistants. The company plans to develop these next-generation robotic platforms using NVIDIA Holoscan IGX, Isaac for Healthcare, Isaac GR00T and Cosmos technologies.
Meanwhile, Direava is building an intelligent surgical vision-language model capable of understanding live surgical procedures in real time. The platform combines computer vision and natural language interaction to assist surgeons during operations and lays the foundation for future AI-powered operating rooms where robotic systems can interpret surgical environments and provide intelligent support.
Smarter Medical Imaging Through Accelerated Computing
Japan’s medical imaging sector is also adopting AI-enhanced hardware to improve diagnostic capabilities.
Canon has launched Japan’s first photon-counting CT scanner accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs, delivering enhanced image quality and greater diagnostic precision. Fujifilm has commercialized the country’s first whole-body CT system powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, using advanced diffusion-based deep learning reconstruction to generate clearer medical images.
These AI-powered imaging systems enable earlier disease detection, improved diagnostic accuracy and better patient outcomes while reducing scanning limitations associated with conventional imaging technologies.
Vision AI Expands Across Industry
NVIDIA’s Metropolis platform is enabling Japanese enterprises to build intelligent vision AI agents capable of understanding, reasoning and acting upon video data in real time.
More than eighty new development libraries—including NVIDIA VSS Blueprint, DeepStream, TAO and Physical AI Data Factory—allow developers to create production-ready vision AI applications much faster than traditional development methods.
Several Japanese companies are already deploying these technologies across industries:
- OMRON enhances industrial inspection using AI-powered video analytics.
- DeepHow helps Yazaki North America automate manufacturing time-and-motion studies, reducing analysis time from weeks to days.
- Hitachi integrates vision AI into rail infrastructure and smart buildings to improve maintenance efficiency and reduce energy consumption.
- Fujitsu combines AI-powered video understanding with its Agentic Memory platform to improve operational intelligence across logistics, manufacturing and retail.
- Shimizu Corporation is testing AI-powered construction safety monitoring.
- Asilla and AWL deploy AI vision systems for public safety, retail and manufacturing operations.
Together, these deployments demonstrate how AI is transforming physical operations through intelligent video understanding and automation.
Financial Services Build AI Infrastructure
Japan’s banking industry is transitioning from experimental AI projects to enterprise-scale AI infrastructure.
Mizuho plans to build one of the country’s largest on-premises AI factories using NVIDIA DGX systems. Keeping AI infrastructure within its own facilities allows the bank to develop secure autonomous AI agents while maintaining strict governance over sensitive financial information. Planned applications include document generation, software development, information analysis and operational support.
Japan Research Institute, the core IT organization of SMBC Group, has deployed an AI factory powered by NVIDIA Nemotron open models to convert financial data into actionable intelligence. This initiative supports productivity improvements and enterprise-wide AI adoption throughout one of Japan’s largest financial institutions.
Rakuten Bank is developing transaction foundation models using NVIDIA Agent Toolkit across its extensive digital ecosystem, which includes millions of banking, credit card and brokerage customers. These models aim to provide highly personalized financial intelligence and banking services.
Ippu Senkin is collaborating with financial institutions to develop sovereign AI solutions for secure payment processing using NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and locally deployed AI agents, ensuring regulatory compliance and data security.
Collectively, these projects demonstrate how Japan’s financial sector is building trusted AI systems capable of operating within highly regulated environments.
AI and Quantum Computing Advance Scientific Discovery
Japan is also investing heavily in AI-driven scientific research and quantum computing.
At RIKEN, two new supercomputers powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs are supporting national AI initiatives.
The RIKYU supercomputer will accelerate foundation model development across life sciences, materials science and laboratory automation. Meanwhile, the ROQUO quantum-HPC system tightly integrates accelerated computing with quantum processors, enabling hybrid quantum-classical computing workloads.
Researchers are already exploring AI-generated quantum circuits using NVIDIA CUDA-Q to improve quantum algorithm development.
NVIDIA is also collaborating with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to integrate AI into future quantum computing systems. Technologies such as NVIDIA NVQLink and AI-based quantum error correction aim to improve quantum processor performance and scalability.
In quantum chemistry, Mitsubishi Chemical, Mizuho Bank, Keio University, AIST, the University of Toronto and NVIDIA have demonstrated AI-accelerated molecular simulations that significantly outperform traditional CPU-based workflows, opening new possibilities for materials science, semiconductor research and pharmaceutical development.
Toyota Expands Physical AI
Toyota continues to deepen its collaboration with NVIDIA across autonomous vehicles, manufacturing and urban mobility.
The automaker is developing next-generation advanced driver assistance systems (L2++) using NVIDIA DRIVE AGX hardware and DriveOS software, enabling safer and more intelligent driving capabilities.
Toyota is also accelerating software engineering through AI-powered code generation models trained using NVIDIA Megatron-LM and Nemotron datasets, helping engineers produce safety-critical automotive software more efficiently.
Within manufacturing, Toyota employs NVIDIA Omniverse and Isaac Sim to build digital twins of production facilities, allowing engineers to simulate robotics, optimize factory operations and reduce downtime before deploying physical systems.
Additionally, Woven by Toyota has developed a multimodal vision-language model powered by NVIDIA H100 GPUs to improve urban traffic intelligence by understanding complex real-world transportation environments and supporting smarter mobility infrastructure.
Gaming Partnership Celebrates Three Decades
NVIDIA and SEGA marked over thirty years of collaboration by announcing that Virtua Fighter Crossroads and future SEGA titles will support NVIDIA RTX Spark, the company’s new AI-enabled platform for compact Windows PCs.
The partnership dates back to the 1990s when NVIDIA’s NV1 graphics chip powered one of the earliest PC versions of the original Virtua Fighter. Today’s collaboration extends that legacy by combining AI technologies such as ray tracing, DLSS and accelerated graphics to deliver richer gaming experiences on future personal computing platforms.
A New Era of AI Innovation
Across healthcare, pharmaceuticals, finance, scientific research, manufacturing, transportation and entertainment, Japan is rapidly building AI into its national technology infrastructure. Rather than isolated pilot projects, organizations are deploying AI at enterprise scale to solve real-world challenges, improve productivity and accelerate innovation. Supported by NVIDIA’s full-stack AI ecosystem—from accelerated computing and foundation models to robotics and quantum computing—Japan is positioning itself at the forefront of the next generation of intelligent technologies.
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