Definition
FRONTia is Japan’s METI-backed program formally titled “Development of Multimodal Foundation Models with a View to AI Robotics and Physical AI.” It aims to produce open multimodal foundation models for robotics, digital twins, and industrial automation.
Key Points
- Delivered by noetra and aist under a NEDO public tender (won June 30, 2026)
- Funding envelope: up to ¥1 trillion FY2026–2030; first tranche ~¥387.3 billion; post year-two subject to stage-gate reviews
- Model roadmap: reasoning FM (FY2026) → omni-modal (FY2028) → real-world native AI (FY2030)
- Compute vehicle: nvidia-rubin AI factory (~27.5k GPUs), ops ~June 2028