Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia driving the global artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor revolution, recently excluded Japan from his Asia tour, fueling a sense of crisis within the country. Analysts say that because Japan's semiconductor ecosystem centers on upstream materials and equipment, there is little incentive for Nvidia to engage it directly, unlike South Korea or Taiwan, which supply Nvidia directly, or the United States and China, which are major buyers.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun gave prominent coverage to the matter on Monday, focusing on Huang's visits to China, Taiwan and South Korea while questioning "whether Japan, with its weakened semiconductor industry, can join the mainstream of the global AI ecosystem."
The Nikkei went on to point out that "most of Japan's semiconductor companies considered to be competitive have not established direct strategic partnerships with Nvidia." In semiconductors, Japan boasts strong players such as manufacturing equipment makers Tokyo Electron and Advantest, and wafer materials company Shin-Etsu Chemical, but these firms do not have direct business relationships with Nvidia. An executive at one Japanese equipment manufacturer described it this way: "Nvidia is a client of TSMC, which is our customer."
The Nikkei in particular offered a self-deprecating assessment that Japan remains at the level of a subcontractor rather than a core partner, criticizing that "Huang's Japan passing this time is not caused by transaction volume, but because Japanese companies that stand out on the global AI stage are almost nowhere to be found."
Collaboration between Nvidia and Japanese companies is not entirely absent. Huang visited Japan in October last year and announced plans to jointly develop AI semiconductors with Fujitsu. The plan applies technology that connects Fujitsu's central processing units (CPU) and Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPU) at ultra-high speeds within boards or servers. Fujitsu and Nvidia are also pursuing ways to enhance autonomy by applying AI semiconductor and software technology to the industrial robots of robotics company Yaskawa Electric.
In particular, Fanuc, a major Japanese industrial robot maker, has had a deep relationship with Nvidia, envisioning a "future factory where thinking robots work" since 2016. However, compared with South Korea and Taiwan, Japanese firms' cooperation is limited, the newspaper noted, citing Nvidia's announcement on Sunday that it would jointly operate an AI factory with SK Group.
Anthropic and Palantir have also visited Japan, but the Nikkei pointed out that they treated Japanese companies as customers rather than partners. As a result, according to Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan's "digital deficit," which factors in various costs paid to AI companies, is estimated to grow from 6.8 trillion yen (about 64.49 trillion won) in 2025 to 18 trillion yen (about 170.7 trillion won) by 2035.
It added: "When Apple, which sparked the smartphone revolution, partnered with Sony and Murata Manufacturing, Japanese companies gained new growth engines." It warned that "the reality that there are no companies attractive enough for Huang to visit Japan and propose cooperation could become a major variable that determines Japan's national wealth going forward."
