NVIDIA is the biggest backer of OpenCL, which can certainly be used to run PhysX-like physics processing.
It takes a LONG time to develop and get out a set of open standards. NVIDIA didn't want to wait to get a good set of physics tools out to devs and into games. With the development of CUDA, NVIDIA acquired Ageia and ported Ageia PhysX into CUDA (in only a few days, I'm told).
At the same time, NVIDIA chairs Khronos, the guys that do, most notably, OpenGL, OpenCL and other open-source standards. In short, NVIDIA doesn't care if your physics are PhysX or OpenCL based, either is good for them, they both help sell more graphics cards. The 100M+ NVIDIA GPUs that support CUDA also support OpenCL.
The current GeForce 300 GPUs you'll see around don't use the Fermi nanoarchitecture that the GF100 based GTX 470 and GTX 480 will. Mid-range solutions that use the Fermi arch are likely to follow a few months after the March 26th launch of the GTX 470 and 480s.
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