Japanese AI start-up challenges titans with lean innovationーNHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS
Generative AI has taken the world by storm from schools to boardrooms and the biggest names in tech have led the charge based in the US and China. Uh but with the AI race heating up, a shift is underway. Smaller companies are starting to make waves and one of them is a startup here in Japan. Yuko Fukushima joins us now with more on that. So Yuko, are the tech giants finally getting some competition? Well, they just might be. You know, AI companies uh typically invest heavily in cutting edge semiconductors and data centers that cost billions and that explains why major players like OpenAI and Microsoft are big tech companies. But some smaller companies are entering the game and this trend could shake up the industry. Sakana AI is one of those promising startups. It was founded in Japan by former Google tech engineers and is the only Japan-based company to make it into the AI top 50 list this year. Sakana means fish in Japanese. The name was chosen to signal both evolution and collective intelligence. The company developed a new technology that merges multiple existing AI models to create new models. Now, this lowcost tech promises to allow the startup to compete with the industry giants. H. So that catches the eye. So what has the company actually delivered? Well, Sakana AI has rolled out a series of products since its launch about two years ago. And their market focus in is in Japan with customers in both the public and private sectors. And they’re also using AI to push into new areas of scientific research. And one app that grabbed my attention was an offline chatbot that allows you to use it anywhere. No internet connection needed. It also means the information you feed into the chatbot stays on the phone, keeping it private. On the research side, the Japanese startup has developed what it calls the AI scientist, an Asia that can carry out independent research and even write a thesis on its own. Uh you know, Yuko, I like the idea of a chatbot you can use offline. You know, that privacy aspect because uh you know, I sometimes worry how much, you know, how my information is used on the internet, right? And that chatbot is just one product that the company has introduced over the last 18 months. It’s pretty impressive considering the size of the company, right? And just this week, it reeled in one of the biggest clients so far, MUFG, one of Japan’s largest financial institutions. The startup will develop AI systems specifically designed for the bank’s operations. I had a chance to talk to the company’s co-founder and CEO, David Ha, to find out what’s behind the tie-up and what his visions is for the future of AI. We’re very excited about this partnership because uh in our view uh the banking sector is the most uh core sector like one of the core important sectors in Japan. uh the banks control uh you know many of the deposits, many of the resources uh that are deployed to the rest of the Japanese economy. So in a sense they’re they’re the lifeline. We’re working on incorporating our AI technology into uh workflow assistance from areas like idea generation uh to risk managements uh all the way to things like uh you know like the analyzing or uh loan applications. In a broader picture, you know, there are growing concerns that only a handful of major companies will dominate the generative AI space. What is your prospects for generative AI and how it should be shaped going forward? Especially in the generative AI space, many investors have initially have the view that it’s a it’s the winner takes all. maybe there’s one winner but I have the view that AI is an area where there won’t be one winner or there can’t be one winner because uh the cost of developing AI you know it some of some parts of the technology may be very capital consuming we can make these models and technology very efficient and I think that’s in the next three to five years this technology will be a million times more efficient and anyone will be able to develop AI technology technology. So we may see a very different AI space in the next 3 to 5 years with you know startups like yours. I hope so. Yeah. I think you know especially uh with our progress on both the R&D and the commercial side. The way we distinguish ourselves uh in this you know paradigm of how to you know like survive in a place where you have two dominant countries is we cannot just compete directly with China or US. We think that we’re going to develop new architectures and new paradigms that would challenge the current power consuming large language model paradigms. So I think uh the efficiency is the key word. Creating new technology that moves the needle in terms of efficiency will allow Sakana AI to distinguish ourselves from our competitors in the US and China. So this is quite a hopeful development. So you go maybe the days of tech giants I’m dominating everything AI are coming to an end. Yeah, Rena, the next big invasion and generative AI could be coming from much smaller companies and one from Japan. Um definitely keep you guys posted.
Tokyo-based Sakana AI just landed a major banking client. CEO David Ha explains why customized apps focused on energy efficiency could shape the future of generative AI.
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