The government held the 9th Japan Growth Strategy Council and designated physical AI as a priority area. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Harmonic Drive Systems and SoftBank reportedly explained their domestic investment plans and requests.
The draft implementation plan consists broadly of 3 elements. It establishes a 5-year period of concentrated investment and sets out domestic investment through around 2030, along with the major products and technologies covered. In addition, it presents a policy of providing comprehensive support for cross-sector issues and programmes funded through multi-year budgets, with targets and KPIs to be set in advance and reviewed regularly.
Products and technologies in 17 fields are broadly divided into 3 categories: current sources of revenue, future growth drivers and the strengthening of economic security. Physical AI is included among the priority areas under future growth drivers. The measures are expected to proceed on 4 pillars: developing and providing domestic platforms, establishing robotics platforms, supporting the adoption of AI robots, and creating core AI robotics hubs.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries said it plans approximately ¥550 billion in growth investment through fiscal 2030, of which approximately ¥140 billion will be allocated to robotics and physical AI. Harmonic Drive Systems compared the reducers that move the joints of AI robots to “muscles” and presented plans to expand domestic production capacity with an investment of ¥15 billion. SoftBank proposed a ¥65 trillion-scale AI computing infrastructure initiative and said it aims to use domestic AI infrastructure and develop related services.
The 3 companies share 3 common issues: mass production and demand creation, and infrastructure development. The alignment with the draft implementation plan is not explicitly stated, or can be read as such. Reports say the focus will now shift to formulating the implementation plan by the end of the year and determining how specifically private-sector investment will take shape with government support.