Global Brain has invested in Sakana AI K.K. (Sakana AI), a company developing new kinds of generative-AI foundation models inspired by the laws of nature, through its GB-IX Growth Fund Investment Limited Partnership (GB-IX), KDDI Open Innovation Fund III (KOIF III), and SMBC-GB Growth Fund jointly managed with SMBC Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd. This is a follow-on investment by KOIF III and the first investment by GB-IX and SMBC-GB Growth Fund. Global investors have also invested in this round, including Lux Capital (co-lead), Khosla Ventures (co-lead), New Enterprise Associates (co-lead), and NVIDIA, while Global Brain played a key role in Japan. Sakana AI is a Japan-based startup that aims to apply nature-inspired ideas, such as evolution and collective intelligence, to create foundation models. Aiming to solve the issue of rising computational complexity in large-scale generative-AI foundation models, Sakana AI is striving to create new methods for streamlining, sophisticating, and automating the development of foundation models. Since its establishment, Sakana AI has pursued what it believes is coming next for the development of generative AI foundation models, instead of simply doing what everyone else is doing to develop standard foundation models. In March 2024, Sakana AI released “Evolutionary Model Merge,” a new way of developing foundation models, and announced an efficient way to use Large Language Models (LLMs) to train LLMs themselves in June 2024. The company has also been selected for the “Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC),” the Japanese government’s AI project led by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). Through these achievements, Sakana AI is, as a world-class AI lab in Japan, aiming to advance AI development that can solve major challenges faced by Japan and other Asian countries. Global Brain has decided to invest in Sakana AI, highly appreciating its unique vision, technological capabilities, and research achievements since its establishment. Through this investment, Global Brain will work on comprehensive management support for further growth of Sakana AI.

About Sakana AI

Location: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
CEO: David Ha
Founded: July 2023
URL: https://sakana.ai/

About GB-IX

Name: GB-IX Growth Fund Investment Limited Partnership
General Partner: Global Brain Corporation

About KOIF III

Name: KDDI Open Innovation Fund III
General Partner: Global Brain Corporation
Fund Size: JPY 30 billion

About SMBC-GB Growth Fund

Name: SMBC-GB Growth I Investment Limited Partnership
General Partners: SMBC Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd. and Global Brain Corporation
Limited Partner: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC)
Fund Size: JPY 30 billion

About Global Brain

Location: Tokyo, Japan
Representative: Yasuhiko Yurimoto
Founded: January 1998
URL: https://globalbrains.com/

Global Brain has invested in Sakana AI K.K., a company developing new kinds of generative-AI foundation models inspired by the laws of nature