Hitachi, Ltd.

Face recognition 'face pass' services are gradually expanding at station ticket gates, supermarket payments, and baseball games. Trial Holdings has introduced a payment service using NEC's face recognition technology at 15 stores in Tokyo and Fukuoka Prefecture, and at Yomiuri Giants games at Tokyo Dome, face pass entry and hands-free payment at some shops using Panasonic Connect technology have become possible. Hitachi and Tobu Railway have introduced face recognition ticket gates at Ikebukuro Station on the Tobu Tojo Line and plan to make them usable for payments at nearby commercial facilities. Panasonic Connect evangelist Kunio Furuta expects the face recognition market to grow from 55.7 billion yen last year to around 130 billion yen by 2030. Meanwhile, the ID Authentication Technology Promotion Association has pointed out concerns about tracking user behavior and is urging businesses to operate carefully to avoid privacy violations.

The first 12-car set of the new N700ST trains for the Taiwan High-Speed Rail, manufactured in Japan, arrived at the port in the southern city of Kaohsiung on the 15th. Operator Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corporation has ordered 12 sets totaling 144 cars, with plans to put them into commercial service starting in July 2027. Peak capacity is expected to rise by 25 percent. Based on JR Central's latest N700S Shinkansen, the trains were ordered from a consortium of Hitachi and Toshiba for approximately 124 billion yen, achieving reductions in noise, vibration, and power consumption. A ceremony was held at the port, where Transport Minister Chen Shih-kai expressed his hopes, saying, "What we are seeing today is not just a single new train car, but the future development of industry and cities."

The Asia-Pacific automotive 48V systems market is projected to grow from $6.68 billion in 2025 to $29.94 billion by 2035, at a 16.17% CAGR, according to a new report from ResearchAndMarkets.com. Stricter emissions standards, government incentives, and demand for affordable electrification are accelerating 48V mild-hybrid adoption across China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. These systems deliver 10–15% fuel-efficiency gains and serve as a bridge between conventional engines and full EVs. The report profiles key players including Hitachi, Nidec, and Mitsubishi Electric, and highlights challenges such as high implementation costs, complex system integration, and battery supply chain vulnerabilities.

Nvidia has signed seven Japanese industrial giants into its new physical AI coalition, locking in a massive, long-lived stream of demand for its chips and software. Companies including Fujitsu, FANUC, Yaskawa Electric, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Hitachi, NEC, SoftBank, Sony, and Kubota intend to build on Nvidia's Cosmos, Isaac, Metropolis, and Jetson platforms as part of a Cosmos Coalition focused on physical AI. Nvidia is also partnering with Noetra, a Japanese AI consortium backed by Sony, SoftBank, Honda, and dozens of other firms, to build what it calls the world's first national infrastructure for physical AI, centered on a Vera Rubin AI factory with 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs delivering about 140 megawatts of compute capacity. Japan's industry ministry expects this to help the country capture 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government plans to mobilize more than 370 trillion yen, or 2.3 trillion dollars, in combined public and private investment by 2040 across physical AI, semiconductors, and data centers. Noetra's own roadmap calls for roughly 1 trillion yen, or 6.3 billion dollars, of sovereign AI spending over five years to develop domestic foundation models for robots and industrial AI.

Hitachi announced its first-quarter results for the fiscal year ending March 2027, with adjusted operating profit, which reflects the strength of its core business, rising 39.5% year-on-year to 294.3 billion yen. Revenue increased 20.0% to 2.7096 trillion yen, and the adjusted operating profit margin improved from 9.3% to 10.9%. The energy business led the company, with segment profit surging 64.5% to 129.0 billion yen, driven by global power demand and data center investments centered on the power grid. All four reported segments achieved higher revenue and profit. The company raised its full-year earnings forecast and interim dividend outlook. Meanwhile, quarterly profit attributable to owners of the parent edged down 1.4% to 189.4 billion yen due to a decline in financial income.

Hitachi, NEC, and Advantest have raised their full-year earnings forecasts following strong first-quarter results for the fiscal year ending March 2027. Advantest lifted its full-year operating profit forecast from 627.5 billion yen to 846 billion yen, and also significantly raised its outlook for the semiconductor tester market. NEC increased its full-year non-GAAP operating profit forecast from 420 billion yen to 430 billion yen, helped by improved profitability in IT services and aerospace and defense. Hitachi raised its full-year adjusted operating profit forecast from 1.315 trillion yen to 1.408 trillion yen, driven by its energy business and demand for AI transformation.

A consortium including Hitachi and Toshiba held a rollout ceremony on the 30th for the first N700ST train sets destined for the Taiwan High Speed Rail at Hitachi's Kasado Works in Kudamatsu, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The consortium received an order for 12 train sets totaling 144 cars from Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation in 2023, and the shipment this time consists of one 12-car set. The cars are designed based on the latest model for Central Japan Railway Company, featuring downsized equipment and reduced power consumption. They are scheduled to enter commercial service gradually from the summer of 2027.

The Nikkei Stock Average rebounded on the 30th after three days of declines, closing at 61,867 yen, up 433 yen. Selling initially led the market following a drop in U.S. stocks after the FOMC meeting, but a sharp rise in Advantest, which reported strong earnings, triggered renewed buying in AI-related stocks, lifting the overall market. The Nikkei at one point surged more than 1,400 yen to reach the 62,900 level, but it struggled to break above 63,000 and lost momentum, with gains narrowing in the afternoon session. Among individual stocks, Hitachi soared after announcing an upward revision to its earnings forecast, while Craftia plunged after reporting an operating profit decline in the first quarter. Trading value on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market was approximately 12.66 trillion yen.

Hitachi announced on July 30 that it will launch an anti-money laundering monitoring service in October, targeting transactions involving crypto assets, stablecoins, and NFTs. The service provides pre-transaction counterparty wallet risk checks, as well as continuous monitoring of post-transaction fund movements and the circulation of issued tokens, featuring three functions: post-transaction monitoring, online real-time assessment, and token monitoring. Prior to development, as a supported project under the Financial Services Agency's FinTech Proof-of-Concept Hub, Hitachi conducted a proof-of-concept from March to May 2026 with 17 companies including financial institutions and crypto asset-related businesses, confirming the feasibility of cross-business risk information sharing and practical application of wallet assessments. Going forward, Hitachi plans to work with relevant parties to flesh out an industry-wide AML joint center for sharing risk information.

Hitachi announced on the 29th that it now expects consolidated net profit for the fiscal year ending March 2027 to reach 900 billion yen, up 12.2 percent from the previous year, raising its earlier forecast of 850 billion yen. The upward revision reflects solid performance in power transmission and distribution equipment for AI-related data centers. Revenue is now seen rising 10.5 percent to 11.7 trillion yen, while adjusted operating profit is projected to increase 17.4 percent to 1.408 trillion yen. The company also reported consolidated results for the April-to-June quarter of fiscal 2026 on the same day, with net profit falling 1.4 percent from a year earlier to 189.4 billion yen and adjusted operating profit surging 39.5 percent to 294.2 billion yen.

Infometis is bid. The company announced on the 24th that it has begun joint development of a next-generation infrastructure digital transformation platform utilizing high-resolution data from second-generation smart meters, together with Energy Gateway, a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Holdings, and Hitachi Systems Power Service, a subsidiary of Hitachi. The three companies aim to build a new data utilization model in the social infrastructure domain by combining data analysis technology, power data platform operation know-how, and power IT infrastructure construction technology.

Turntide Technologies is expanding its high-voltage lithium-iron-phosphate rail battery systems manufacturing line to its Sunderland facility, driven by demand from Hitachi Rail and the growth of hybrid rail operations globally. The battery system enables hybrid and tri-mode trains to operate on both electrified and non-electrified lines while reducing fuel consumption and emissions, and will be manufactured exclusively at the Sunderland location. This production supports Arriva’s Grand Central new fleet being built by Hitachi Rail in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham. CEO Steve Hornyak stated that the expansion reflects strong market demand and confidence in Turntide’s LFP battery technology, providing the capacity to support the next phase of growth in cleaner rail transportation. Paul Turbitt, senior director of strategic operations, will oversee the Sunderland facility and the manufacturing expansion.

Ciroos, Esri, Hexnode, and Hitachi Digital Services have each announced new AI-powered integrations with ServiceNow, expanding its role as a central workflow and data hub across incident management, location intelligence, endpoint security, and critical infrastructure operations. The Hitachi partnership feeds real-time infrastructure monitoring data into the ServiceNow AI Platform and Workflow Data Fabric, extending its reach from IT help desks into mission-critical physical operations. These moves add evidence of ecosystem depth as investors await Q2 earnings, which will test whether demand supports the thesis of durable subscription growth. ServiceNow’s narrative projects $23.6 billion in revenue and $4.0 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 19.1% yearly revenue growth, while the most optimistic analysts see up to $26.1 billion in revenue and $5.7 billion in earnings by that year. Execution risk and AI competition remain key concerns that could pressure growth and margins.

Nvidia is widening its reach across Japan's largest industries. During a visit to Tokyo, CEO Jensen Huang announced partnerships covering robotics, health care, banking, manufacturing, automobiles, quantum computing and gaming. Japanese companies including FANUC, Sony, Hitachi, Kubota and SoftBank plan to work with Nvidia on physical AI models for robots and industrial systems. In health care, several drugmakers are using Nvidia's BioNeMo platform for drug discovery, while Canon and Fujifilm introduced medical imaging systems built with Nvidia technology. Toyota is expanding its work with Nvidia on driver-assistance software, factory simulations and traffic systems, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui are building AI infrastructure for banking, and RIKEN is preparing Blackwell-powered supercomputers for scientific and quantum research.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a broad slate of AI products, partnerships, and customer deployments at the company's Japan AI event in Tokyo on July 15. The announcements spanned physical AI, healthcare, financial services, quantum computing, automotive, manufacturing, and gaming, highlighting Nvidia's push to position its technologies at the forefront of Japan's next-generation AI infrastructure. In physical AI and robotics, Nvidia launched Cosmos 3 Edge for on-device vision reasoning, and companies including FANUC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Kubota, NEC, SoftBank, Sony Group, and Yaskawa Electric plan to join the Nvidia Cosmos Coalition to develop open physical AI models. In healthcare, Astellas Pharma, Eisai, Daiichi Sankyo, Ono Pharmaceutical, and Takeda Pharmaceutical are deploying Nvidia BioNeMo for AI-powered drug discovery, while Canon and Fujifilm introduced Nvidia-powered next-generation CT systems, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries is advancing AI-enabled surgical and hospital robots. In financial services, Mizuho Financial plans Japan's largest on-premises AI factory for banking, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial has deployed an AI factory through Japan Research Institute, and Rakuten Bank is developing AI transaction foundation models using Nvidia Agent Toolkit. Huang emphasized that the next wave of AI will be physical AI—robots, factories, vehicles, and industrial systems that can perceive, reason, and act in the real world—and said Japan's leadership in robotics, manufacturing, and precision engineering positions it to play a leading role in this transition.

US semiconductor giant Nvidia announced on the 16th, coinciding with CEO Jensen Huang's visit to Japan, a series of expanded partnerships with Japanese companies including Fujitsu and Toyota Motor. With Fujitsu, it will jointly explore commercialization in areas such as factories, retail, and logistics, together with Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. It will provide technical cooperation for Toyota Motor's Woven City test course, and collaborate with Hitachi on realizing a system that integrates and controls entire sites such as factories and power plants. These initiatives will promote the social implementation of physical AI, which can be utilized for robot operations and other applications.

NVIDIA announced that leading Japanese enterprises, startups, and research institutions are building industry-specialized AI models and applications with NVIDIA Nemotron open models, data, and libraries. The Institute of Science Tokyo developed its Swallow family of open foundation models using NVIDIA Nemotron datasets and the NVIDIA NeMo software stack, enhancing Japanese language and reasoning performance. SoftBank Corp.'s SB Intuitions trained its Sarashina series of generative AI models using NVIDIA Nemotron, with Sarashina3 mini selected by Japan's Digital Agency for specialized use cases. Stockmark released a specialized Japanese-language document-understanding model based on the NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano Omni model. Japanese enterprises including avatarin, ENEOS Holdings, Hitachi, and NTT DATA are building Japanese-language AI applications with NVIDIA Nemotron for remote-presence robotics, enterprise agents, and specialized medical and contact centers. Sakana AI is integrating NVIDIA Nemotron into its Fugu model-routing platform to dynamically select the best model for each task in agentic AI workflows.

Hitachi and Tobu Railway, among others, launched a face recognition system at the ticket gates of Ikebukuro Station on the Tobu Tojo Line on the 15th. By registering facial data and commuter pass information in advance, passengers can pass through the gates hands-free. This is the first deployment at a major terminal station in Tokyo, and for now it is limited to travel between Kami-Itabashi Station and Ikebukuro Station on the Tobu Tojo Line. The system was jointly developed with three ticket gate manufacturers including Toshiba, as well as Panasonic Connect, and can be built by adding cameras to existing gates, so expansion to other railway companies is also under consideration. The partners also aim to promote it as a face recognition payment service at commercial facilities around Ikebukuro Station.

Hitachi Vantara's storage manufacturing facility in Norman, Oklahoma, has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a Global Lighthouse Factory, marking the second Hitachi Group site to receive this recognition after Omika Works in 2020. The Norman facility deployed AI across its operations, achieving a 77% reduction in order-to-shipment lead time and a 50% reduction in inventory through Agentic AI-driven demand forecasting and supply chain management. AI also cut configure-to-order production lead time by 84% and reduced new worker training time by 80%. Hitachi will incorporate the AI expertise gained from this Customer Zero initiative into its HMAX suite of solutions to accelerate AI Transformation for the group and its customers.

On July 8, multiple research firms maintained their top investment ratings on 13 stocks and raised their target prices. Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities raised its target price for Kumagai Gumi from 2,200 yen to 2,250 yen, for Penta-Ocean Construction from 2,400 yen to 2,500 yen, and for Infroneer Holdings from 2,850 yen to 3,150 yen, maintaining bullish ratings on all three. Goldman Sachs raised its target price for Sumitomo Electric Industries from 3,125 yen to 3,400 yen, for Hitachi from 6,100 yen to 6,300 yen, for Mitsubishi Electric from 7,000 yen to 7,400 yen, for Panasonic Holdings from 4,220 yen to 5,000 yen, and for Anritsu from 4,700 yen to 5,300 yen, maintaining buy ratings. Tokai Tokyo Intelligence Laboratory raised its target price for NHK Spring from 3,060 yen to 4,480 yen, and for MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings from 6,000 yen to 6,100 yen, maintaining bullish ratings. Nomura Securities raised its target price for As One from 3,400 yen to 3,500 yen, and for Pilot Corporation from 1,867 yen to 1,950 yen, maintaining buy ratings. Nikko Securities raised its target price for Chubu Electric Power from 3,000 yen to 3,500 yen, maintaining a bullish rating.

Hitachi's stock may still be undervalued, with a discounted cash flow model estimating an intrinsic value of ¥5,621 per share compared to the current price near ¥4,642, implying a 17.4% discount. The company generated trailing twelve-month free cash flow of about ¥1.22 trillion, and the model assumes continued cash flow growth. On an earnings basis, Hitachi trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.0 times, below a fair P/E estimate of 33.7 times, also suggesting undervaluation. However, broader valuation checks are mixed, with the stock screening as undervalued in only three of six tests. Recent developments include Hitachi Vantara's role in unstructured data management, Hitachi Energy's investment in a new US power transformer facility, and a partial exit from Astemo, which carry both growth potential and execution risks.

Fluor Corporation and its joint venture partner Walsh Construction Company have reached Substantial Completion on the Chicago Transit Authority's $2.1 billion Red and Purple Line Modernization Phase One Project, the largest completed capital project in CTA's history. The milestone reflects the collaboration of an exceptional project team including Fluor, Walsh Construction, Stantec, Hitachi, and Meade. Since commencing in 2019, the program has modernized and replaced just over two miles of 100-year-old elevated track between Lawrence and Bryn Mawr, rebuilt four stations into modern, fully accessible facilities, and constructed the Red-Purple Bypass to eliminate track conflicts and improve throughput for Red, Purple, and Brown Line service. Additionally, 11 miles of new digital track circuit signaling have been installed, increasing capacity today while enabling future enhancements. The new stations and tracks fully opened in the summer of 2025, with final completion for RPM Phase One scheduled for November 2026.

Hitachi Vantara has been named a Leader and Fast Mover in the 2026 GigaOm Radar for Unstructured Data Management for the sixth consecutive year. The recognition highlights the company's automated policy enforcement, including policy automation and classification capabilities, immutable object lock, retention and tiering policies, and enterprise workflow integration, which help enterprises control unstructured data at scale. Recent enhancements to the Virtual Storage Platform One extend VSP 360 capabilities to VSP One Object and introduce support for the next-generation VSP One Object O14 platform, along with more granular scaling options and metadata optimizations that improve small object IOPS by up to 4x. The evaluation underscores Hitachi Vantara's strength in governance, automation, and control across hybrid environments as organizations seek to reduce risk and prepare trusted data for AI and analytics.

Intel is emerging as a potential beneficiary of tightening capacity at rival semiconductor foundries, with Google and Nvidia evaluating the company as an alternative production partner for next-generation AI processors, according to a June 8 report by The Information. The development highlights growing confidence in Intel's foundry capabilities as demand for cutting-edge semiconductor capacity continues to outstrip supply. Separately, on June 5, Intel and Hitachi announced a strategic collaboration to advance physical AI, next-generation computing, and digital infrastructure across manufacturing, energy, and mobility sectors.

Nuclear energy could help meet the surging electricity needs of AI data centers, and two stocks poised to benefit are BWX Technologies and Oklo. BWX Technologies is a major supplier of nuclear components, generating roughly $2.3 billion in 2025 from government operations and $853 million from commercial operations, with an $8.6 billion backlog as of March 2026. The company is also working with GE Vernova and Hitachi on small modular reactor technology. Oklo is designing a fast-fission microreactor called Aurora powerhouse that can run for years without carbon emissions and use nuclear waste as fuel, though its design has not yet been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the company expects to burn $80 million to $100 million in cash during 2026.

Hitachi is expanding its work with OpenAI to accelerate AI-driven modernization and cybersecurity. The two companies' Forward Deployed Engineer teams will use OpenAI's AI agent Codex to analyze legacy system source code and establish a modernization approach that enhances visibility into system design, with solutions rolling out first to financial institutions. Hitachi will also gain access to OpenAI's AI models for cybersecurity through the Trusted Access for Cyber program, using them for defensive purposes like remediation and validation under appropriate safeguards. Hitachi's Cyber CoE will act as Customer Zero, applying insights internally to strengthen cybersecurity and enhance its HMAX next-generation AI solution suite.