Japan’s Sakana AI Teams Up with Nvidia, Secures $100 Million

US chipmaker Nvidia partners with Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based firm founded by ex-Google researchers, to boost Japan’s artificial intelligence community.

The Tokyo-based business raised $100 million in a Series A fundraising round that was headed by Nvidia and included participation from New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, and Lux Capital.

Japan’s artificial intelligence community will be developed through a partnership between US chipmaker Nvidia and Tokyo-based firm Sakana AI, founded a year ago. Among its founders are researchers from Google.

The business secured $100 million in a Series A fundraising round from prominent investors, “led by New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, and Lux Capital, with participation from Nvidia,” in addition to the Nvidia relationship. To build “nature-inspired, sustainable, and energy-efficient AI technologies,” the funding will be allocated to talent and infrastructure development.

The action is being taken at a time when tax rules that encourage the growth of startups are being implemented in Japan in an effort to strengthen the country’s Web3 economy. The financial authority for Japan intends to update the tax legislation in 2025 and may include provisions lowering the tax rates on cryptocurrency assets.

Collaboration with Nvidia is anticipated to advance Japan’s AI potential.

With Nvidia, Sakana AI is researching, gaining access to data centers, and developing fresh methods for productive foundation model creation.

Jensen Huang, the creator and CEO of Nvidia, stated in a statement that “the team at Sakana AI is helping spur the democratization of AI in Japan by developing cutting-edge foundation models to automate and speed up scientific discovery with Nvidia’s accelerated computing platform.”

The startup claims that compared to top US and Chinese locations, Japan’s skill pool for AI is now relatively small. However, it is anticipated that this partnership with Nvidia would boost events, hackathons, and university outreach and expand the visibility of Japan’s AI community.

Sakana AI elaborated on its approach, saying:

“We aim to build a world-class AI lab in Japan, to produce technologies that can help Japan and its allies cope with challenges that Japan will face for the rest of the 21st century.”

In its January seed fundraising round, Sakana AI raised $30 million.

Derived from the Japanese word for “fish,” Sakana is devoted to investigating and creating novel foundation models that draw inspiration from intelligence found in nature.

On January 16, Sakana AI declared that Lux Capital, with “strong backing” from Khosla Ventures, has led a $30 million seed fundraising round for the company. Several notable investment firms were also involved in the seed investing round, including 500 Global, Miyako Capital, Basis Set Ventures, JAFCO, July Fund, Geodesic Capital, and Learn Capital.

According to the company, it has funding from KDDI CVC and Sony Group and a research agreement with NTT.