(Bloomberg) -- Nvidia Corp.-backed Sakana AI was valued at $1.5 billion a little over a year after its launch, boosted by investments from some of Japan’s biggest banks and companies, a person familiar with the matter said.
Founded in July 2023 by former Google researchers, Sakana has received an outsized welcome in Japan, which is eager to catch up to the US and China in artificial intelligence. It’s won processing time on one of the country’s supercomputers and quickly recruited partners to build out Japan’s AI ecosystem.
The 20-person startup said on Tuesday that it raised about ¥30 billion ($214 million) in a Series A funding round. Financial institutions including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Nomura Holdings Inc. invested. NEC Corp., Itochu Corp., KDDI Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. also participated.
Sakana AI had previously said it was in line to raise more than $100 million, with investments from the likes of Nvidia, New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures and Lux Capital.
“We will accelerate our collaboration with our strategic partners, and together, we will confront the pressing issues and challenges facing Japanese industry and society,” co-founder David Ha said in an email. “While AI alone will certainly not solve all of Japan’s problems, we believe AI can help.”
Sakana’s focus on a large number of small models that work together, rather than on one large foundational model, is attracting investor interest in resource-poor Japan. The island nation, which relies almost wholly on imported energy, has been exploring more power-efficient ways to catch up in AI.
The Tokyo-based company was founded by Ha, who helped set up the Google Brain research team in Tokyo, Llion Jones, co-author of the oft-cited “Attention Is All You Need,” which helped launch the current AI wave, and former Japanese diplomat Ren Ito, who headed online thrift shop Mercari Inc.’s push into Europe.
Ha previously managed Goldman Sachs’ Japanese fixed-income trading business, and that “provided me with an incredible education of how the Japanese economic system actually worked,” Ha said. “I’m excited to bring my expertise from various parts of my career to build the best team that can help accelerate Japan with AI technology.”
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