Disrupting Japan

Japan is much further ahead in real AI deployment than most people realize. Today we talk with David Ha, CEO of Sakana AI, Japan's clearly most valuable, and arguably most innovative, AI startup, and he explains how Japanese enterprises are using AI in production environments today. We talk about selling advanced software to conservative enterprises, how Sakana is customizing existing LLMs to fit Japanese sensibilities, and why smaller, more flexible routing models will likely win out over the massive, expensive frontier models. David also shares some great advice for anyone starting a startup in Japan. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes When it's best build for Japan instead of (or before) going global How to raise money overseas as a KK and raise large rounds in Japan It's actually very easy to start a startup in Japan Sakana AI's three-stage go-to-market strategy The tradeoffs between B2B and B2C strategies in Japan How to drive AI adoption in the Japanese enterprise Designing AI workflows that prevent users from outsourcing decision making Why routing models will win in the market over frontier models What "data sovereignty" actually means in practice in Japan How Sakana AI is adapting existing models to make them reflect Japanese sensibilities David's best advice to founders in Japan Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Sakana AI Follow them on Twitter @SakanaAILabs Connect with Sakana on LinkedIn Follow David on Twitter @hardmaru Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, Straight Talk from Japan's most innovative founders and VCs. I'm Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. To say that AI is hot right now understates the mania. AI startups accounted for over 60% of global VC investment in 2025, and things are on track to be even more AI-focused this year. And while investor and media attention remain stubbornly focused on the U.S. and China, things are moving surprisingly fast here in Japan, although things are moving in a slightly different direction. Today we sit down with David Ha, the co-founder and CEO of Sakana AI, Japan's most valuable and arguably most innovative AI startup. Now this episode's a bit longer than usual, but it is well worth your time, because by the end, you'll understand why the frontier model companies, the open AIs, the Anthropics, might be pursuing a flawed and very expensive strategy, and why there's a real chance for Japan to be a global leader here. In fact, as David explains, enterprise AI adoption in Japan is far more advanced than most people realize. And we're talking about actual production deployments here, not just POCs and press releases, but actual daily use. Now David and I talk about raising capital from both Japanese and foreign VCs, the global importance of AI sovereignty, the best way to drive AI adoption in large conservative Japanese companies, and why AI use in Japan is more widespread than you probably expect. But you know, David tells that story much better than I can. So, let's get right to the interview. Interview Tim: So, we're sitting here with David Ha, the co-founder and CEO of Sakana AI. So, thanks for sitting down with me. I really appreciate it. David: Awesome. Yeah, it's actually really great to have a chat with you, Tim. I mean, as you know, I've been following your podcast for more than a decade before I started a company. Tim: I mean, I love to hear that. I honestly do. Nothing makes me happier. David: Yeah. I mean, I have no idea that I would start a company like 10 years ago. Tim: Let's start with the founding, because the Sakana AI team is really an interesting test case in Japan, I think. So, the founding team itself, it's a mixture of foreigners and Japanese. Tell me about it. Tell me how it came to be, how the three of you got connected and thought this was a good idea. David: It's a really unique, I would say, experiment. I founded this company a little bit less than three years ago. It's myself, David Ha, and Llion Jones, my colleague at Google, who was one of the co-inventors of the transformer architecture, the T in ChatGPT. And when you start a company in Japan, it cannot just be two foreigner guys, especially if you want to be the frontier AI company in Japan. But luckily, I was able to recruit my friend Ren Ito, who used to work at Mercari. And he was sent to Mercari Europe as well to run Mercari, one of the original unicorns. Tim: So, how did you know Ren? David: We worked together at different startup events before. Earlier, also, I worked at another startup briefly called Stability AI. At that time, Ren was working in the UK for that company, and I was working as a contractor remotely in Japan. So, we connected there. Tim: And you were kind of like, hey, I've got a better idea. David: Yeah, something like that. The best way to meet co-founders and colleagues is when you're working at other startups. And when you're working at other companies. Tim: I think that's so true because it is being able to work with someone and see how they work and having that experience is invaluable when picking a founding team. David: Yeah, I totally agree. I think in our founding team, not just the co-founders, many of our employees, the founding employees, are people that I've personally worked with at Google, at Goldman Sachs in Japan, also at other companies like Mercali and Yahoo in Japan, like people that we know. And I think when you've worked with someone before and you kind of know how to coordinate different tasks and work together well, it's like a great mix. Tim: Yeah, yeah. There's fewer surprises, the better, right? So, tell me about the kind of pre-seed team. Was it just you three? David: Yeah, it was just us. It was crazy. I think all three of us have different motivations of starting this company. I'll tell you mine. So, our company is founded in Japan to develop AI technology for Japan. Like when I was looking at your podcast like 10 years ago, there's like many founders in Japan, like they really want to go international right away. They want to move to the valley and try their luck. But there's also other companies that are focused on Japan. Remember this, one of your podcast episodes, like you have so many startups in your podcast. One of them are like focusing on developing the product that produced the best invoices for Japan. Like those companies. Tim: That's a need. But you guys, I mean, I think what's unique about Sakana is that you had a product that, I mean, yes, it's targeted to Japan, but it's truly a global market. And when you first raised money, you went overseas. Your first round was from overseas investors rather than Japan. So why? David: Yeah, exactly. I mean, for us, having worked at Google before and Goldman Sachs before, I think like my experience is generally easier to raise money from overseas markets. Tim: Well, I agree with that for sure. David: Especially in the VC ecosystem. I think in Japan, the VC ecosystem is growing. There's a support, lots of government support as well. But at the end of the day, if you want to have a strong funding round, we wanted to go direct to Sand Hill Road. So, I think what happened was when I started this company, I co-founded with Llon at the beginning. We just announced that we're going to start a company called Sakana AI, an R&D company in Japan. And I just basically sat there working on our tech, working out what we're going to do. And from there, we had many reverse inquiries. Like maybe on Twitter, because I have some following on Twitter as well. Tim: So, inquiries from VCs? David: Yes, from VCs. Basically, all of the VCs reached out to us. Tim: Both Japanese and foreign or primarily…? David: Many foreigners as well. I worked at Mountain View for Google for a few years, and many VCs knew me at the time. I also had many personal connections in that community. So basically, if you have a choice, you might as well try to pitch to Deluxe Capitals, the Vinod Khoslas, the Andreessens, and the Sequoias of the world, right? Tim: So, for the seed round, you raised $30 million. But then the next round, you came back to Japan, and you raised something like $200 million from a series of rounds of Japanese investments. And so why the shift back to Japan? David: For our seed round, it made sense for us to raise from Silicon Valley investors. I think also the nature of the VCs, especially in the seed round, when you raise from prominent Silicon Valley VCs, they want to dominate the entire round. Because the seed round of a company is your highest cost of capital. It's the lowest valuation if your company continues to exist. So, if a VC has decided that they're going to bet on you at the seed stage, it makes sense for them to invest as much as possible. So, there was not a lot of room to involve other companies at our seed stage. We did make room for NTT and Sony and KDDI, but we couldn't. Basically, the first year of our existence is primarily R&D driven. There's absolutely no plan for monetization. As we started out, we wanted to build a foundational R&D company in Japan. We recruited many of our top research colleagues from Google, Prefer Networks, Stability AI. And we set out to actually produce pretty amazing research in the first year, like the AI scientists. Something like that didn't exist before. Tim: And it's actually got a published research paper now, right? David: Yeah. I mean, after two years, it got published in Nature magazine, like the top scientific journal. Tim: That's amazing. David: That's not going to make me money directly as a company, but as a researcher, it's kind of proud that a Japanese AI company can publish something in Nature. Tim: Absolutely amazing proof of concept and proof of suitability. David: So,...

Last month I gave lecture at Globis University on what it takes to build an AI startup today. It's no longer early days for AI, and most founders don't have the connections and resources that drive toady's multi-billion dollar seed rounds. However, as I detail, they still have several paths to success. After the lecture I am joined on stage for a panel discussion by Reiji Yamanaka, the managing director of the Kibo Impact Investment Fund, and Kelvin Song, the program director of the Globis MBA program. It's a fascinating discussion, and I think you'll enjoy it. Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most innovative founders and VCs. I'm Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. I have a special in-between episode for you today. A few weeks back at Globis University, I gave a lecture to aspiring founders on the best way to start a generative AI startup right now in this time of intense AI competition and funding levels. I cover the different AI business models, promising application spaces, and how to know if you've got an AI startup idea with a good chance of success. Now, the first 30 minutes of this episode is the lecture itself, and then I'm joined on stage by Reiji Yamanaka, the managing director of the Kibo Impact Investment Fund, and Kelvin Song, the program director of the Globis MBA program. And we dive even deeper into these ideas and also talk about how generative AI is likely to affect us all. I hope you enjoy it. So let's get right to the presentation. Presentation Today we're going to talk about how to build a generative AI startup and some important things to keep in mind if you actually decide to do that. Now, before I tell you what we're going to cover, I want to kind of tell you what we are explicitly not going to cover. So first, we're not going to talk about the transformative nature of AI in general, the explosive growth of the market. There's already way too much chatter about that, and I assume if you're even thinking about starting an AI startup, you already know it. Second, I'm not going to offer general advice about starting and growing a startups, although this is a topic that's very close to my heart. I want to focus on what can add the most value to you in this particular seminar. If you want to talk about general start advice, talk to me later. I'll point you in the right direction or ask questions afterwards or during the panel discussion. We'll begin today by talking about four common exit and growth strategies. This is a bit unusual. I don't normally recommend that seed or pre-seed companies focus too much on exit strategy, but these are not normal times. With generative AI, you need to plan your end game from the very beginning. We'll spend the bulk of our time talking about actually building your AI startup. We'll cover some key strategic considerations, and also talk about a few of the most promising targets for AI disruption. Does that sound good? Well, before we get to it, why should you listen to me? And that's a totally reasonable question. So, I've been in Japan for, wow, over 30 years now. Currently a partner at Jira Ventures. It's $300 million corporate venture capital firm that invests in green energy, next generation energy, generation technologies. But in my time here, I've started four of my own startups I've sold two, bankrupted two. So, 50 50, not too bad as far as startups go. I've done a lot of angel investing. I've taught entrepreneurship and corporate innovation at New York University's, Tokyo Campus. I've brought foreign startups into Japan as a country manager. I was tapped by TEPCO to come in and help them spin up TEPCO Ventures. I left TEPCO to run Google for Startups, Japan, swearing I would never go back to energy CVC. After four years at Google, I decided to go back to energy CVC because right now what's happening in energy is just fantastically exciting. Oh, and I also run a podcast called Disrupting Japan, where we sit down and we talk with Japanese startup founders and VCs, not so much about their specific company or portfolio, but what it's like to be an innovator in a culture that really prizes, conformity and what problems these startups are trying to solve. So, you know, please like, and subscribe and all that. Okay, let's get into it. Let's talk about your exit strategy and the possible business models that stem from it. Now, as I mentioned before, this is not the usual way of doing things. At seed stage, founders don't normally need to think too deeply about the exit strategy. If you build a rapidly scaling business that adds value to your customers, M&As IPOs, both paths remain open to you and it'll eventually become clear to you which is your best option. It's not something you normally try to optimize for, not at seed anyway. However, these are not normal times, and if you're building a generative AI startup, your exit strategy will greatly influence how you run your business. So, the four exit and growth models in increasing order of complexity are the Peter Pan, riding the hype, rapid customer growth and sustainable revenue growth. Now, we're going to move really quickly through the Peter Pan and riding the hype, since they don't really require growth at all. And honestly, only sustainable revenue growth needs a path to profitability. So we'll be spending by far the most time on that one because sustainable revenue growth, it's the most flexible, it's the most complex, and in most cases, it'll give you the greatest chance for success. Now, as a founder, you need to understand your options and consciously make a choice of what your goal is. And on the other hand, if you're thinking of joining a startup, you need to make sure that you're a hundred percent aligned with the strategy that startups actually executing. Not just the one they're saying they're executing. Now, before we get into the details, I need to point out that, that even if you fully embrace the potential of AI, and it's transformative nature, the VC market has never seen anything like this level of hype and focus. We're already way beyond what we saw during the dotcom area. So, just how hot is the AI market right now? Well, it's stupidly hot right now. Between 60 and 70% of all VC investment is flowing into AI startups. In fact, if you remove the AI investments, VC investment is actually down sharply. So yeah, these are not normal times. So, let's talk about exit and growth strategies. First, the Peter Pan, also known as I'll Never Grow Up. Now this is not a serious strategy, but sadly, it's the one that most startups are executing either consciously or unconsciously. They raise some pre-seed, maybe some seed money. They play with some cool AI tools, they ship a me too product, and then they disappear in a year or two when they can't raise a Series A. Now I include this for two reasons. One, because like a surprising number of founders seem to be fine doing this. Some people just seem to want to have a founder experience and run what I've heard called a starter startup, which I mean, if that's what you want to do, fine. But it seems like kind of a waste of everyone's time. We are here at the beginning of what might be one of the most important transformative shifts in technology. And man, it makes sense to swing for the fences. Don't waste your time chasing small dreams on this. And two, I include the Peter Pan model for those that are thinking of joining an AI startup. If you're thinking of joining a team that is not clearly executing one of these other strategies, they're probably never going to grow up and you're probably wasting your time with them. Okay, let's move on to more profitable strategies. Our second strategy is to ride the hype. Now, I mean, all startups need to do this to some extent. We see hype driven business plans in every hot startup sector, but I mean, AI has everything dialed up to 11. Riding the hype is a pure play. This is pure marketing. Your product is your stock. It's a very good play for the right kind of team. So, what do I mean? We saw safe super intelligence raise a pre-seed round at a $5 billion valuation. They got a nice step up to a $30 billion valuation at seed. Thinking machines just raised 12 billion. Open AI acquired Johnny Ivey’s IO for 6.5 billion on the promise that they would eventually build something cool. Now, these are obviously really big numbers, but if you haven't worked in VC or startups for a while, it might not be apparent just how bonkers these numbers really are. So, when investors invest in seed startups, they're generally looking for a path to a hundred times return. They're not expecting a hundred times return, but they need a path to it. Now, even assuming these are somehow special, they're only looking for 50 times return or 30 times return. This is implying a trillion dollar exit, which would make it not only the biggest startup exit in all history, not only twice as big as the biggest startup exit in all history, but twice as big as the next five biggest startup exits in history combined. And that's not, keep in mind, this is not a bet on the technology. This is a bet on one particular company. So, yeah, thing things are things are a little frothy. Now, these valuations are based on the star power of the founders, and that's important to note that none of these companies have an actual product or even a prototype yet. So, shipping a product is actually a very dangerous step for hype driven companies because that's when people are able to compare the hype and the reality, and very often the reality just doesn't live up to the hype. But anyway, if you are extremely well known in the industry and you can line up an A-list VC to give you that credibility with other investors and to help you exit when the time comes, this could work for you, ride that hype as far as it'll take you. Generally however,...

Last month I spoke on a panel about the future of climate tech. I was joined by Emi Naganuma, the founder and General Partner of Apprecia Capital and Richard Youngman, the CEO Cleantech Group, with Michael Matsumura of Scrum Ventures moderating. Right now is both a challenging and an exciting time for climate tech innovatoin. It's a fascinating discussion, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Progress is not only slower in Japan, it is often different. Looking at the numbers, it's clear that venture capital is even more male-dominated in Japan than it is in the West. Our guest today explains not only how that's changing, but how she's changing it. Sophie Meralli is a Partner at Shizen Capital and co-founder of Tokyo Women in VC. We sit down and dive deep into the keys to developing a creative, global mindset among Japanese founders and VCs, the role immigrants have to play in developing Japan's startup culture, and what really works in changing, not only minds, but actions related to the role of women in startups and venture capital. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Fifteen years ago, University-run venture funds were all illegal here in Japan, but today a higher percentage of major Japanese universities have VC funds than in the US or Europe. Today we sit down with Kei Furukawa, a partner at the University of Tokyo IPC, a $300M venture fund, and we talk about the unique role these funds play in Japan, how they drive innovation in rural areas, and why he has to talk professors out of becoming startup CEOs. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Today we are going to break down some startup stereotypes. I sit down with Kunio Hara, co-founder and CEO of Beatrust and break apart the stereotypes of the uncreative Japanese enterprise and the young startup founder, and Kunio explains how Beatrust is already teaching old dogs new tricks. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan’s most innovative founders and VCs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. There is so much happening in Japan right now. Startups and innovation are beginning to reshape Japan with the same dynamism we saw during the post-war boom or the Meji-era re-opening. And I’ve been in the middle of this for a long time. I’m now a partner a JERA Ventures, but over the over 30 years that I’ve lived in Japan, I’ve started four startups here, worked at TEPCO Ventures, ran Google for Startups Japan, and, of course, I’ve been running the Disrupting Japan podcast for more than 10 years. Every episode, I sit down with friends, VCs, founders, and leaders who are shaping Japan’s startup ecosystem to give you an inside look at what’s really happening here in Japan. So, please subscribe and join me on this journey. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for listening to Disrupting Japan.

Most outside of the energy industry are (pleasantly) surprised to learn how aggressively startups and CVCs are pushing decarbonization forward. Decarbonization is a fascinating and incredibly important issue, so please join me on this short but special episode. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.