NEC Orchestrating Future Fund invests in Sakana AI to promote development of generative AI
NEC Orchestrating Future Fund (NOFF), an ecosystem-based
corporate venture capital (CVC) fund, has made an investment in Sakana AI, a
Japan-based company that gathers technical talent from around the world to
conduct research and development of generative AI.
While the use of AI is essential to improve the
competitiveness of companies, the development of large-scale AI models requires
an enormous amount of time and cost to learn data.
Sakana AI was founded in Tokyo in 2023 by David
Ha, who has led research on complex and autonomous systems at Google Brain's
Japan division, Llion Jones, one of the authors of the paper "Attention Is
All You Need," which helped to trigger the current boom in generative AI,
and Ren Ito, who took the lead on the global expansion of Mercari, Japan's
first unicorn start-up. The company creates innovative AI development methods
by combining multiple different AI models, resulting in the low cost creation
of large-scale models that feature new functions.
NEC aims to be a social value creator that solves
various social issues through cutting-edge technologies. AI is a key technology
for achieving these goals, which makes it essential to ensure that AI models
are developed efficiently and safely for a wide range of industries.
Sakana AI's technology has the potential to
quickly lead to solutions to unique and complex challenges in a variety of
fields, including space and government. Therefore, with this investment, NEC
Corporation has initiated discussions with Sakana AI for
business collaboration using generative AI.
"The NEC Orchestrating Future Fund invests in
startups that are pioneering new markets with cutting-edge technologies and
innovative business models," said Motoo Nishihara, Corporate Executive
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of NEC Corporation.
"Sakana AI is a company that can greatly expand the potential of AI
applications, which is in line with NEC's vision of AI that is smoothly
integrated throughout society. Together with Sakana AI, we will accelerate our
efforts to create new social value."
"We will accelerate both our R&D and
business development collaboration in partnership with NEC," said David
Ha, Co-Founder and CEO of Sakana AI. "Through our partnership with NEC, we
will do our utmost to provide solutions to the challenges that Japanese
industries and society face."
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