Japanese artificial intelligence (AI) startup Sakana AI has completed a $100m (Y14.35bn) Series A funding round.
The funding round, led by New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, and Lux Capital, also saw participation from NVIDIA, with whom Sakana AI has formed a strategic collaboration.
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Established in 2023, Sakana AI seeks to create a premier AI laboratory in Japan, focused on developing technologies to assist Japan and its allies in addressing challenges throughout the 21st century.
With Series A funding, the company plans to attract top talent and build a leading AI team in the industry.
The proceeds will also be used to expand the company’s infrastructure to support the creation of nature-inspired, sustainable, and energy-efficient AI technologies.
Bloomberg, reported that Sakana AI, which was previously valued at approximately $200m, is taking a different approach to industry giants like OpenAI.
Instead of spending billions on training AI with vast datasets, Sakana AI’s algorithms are designed to automate the creation of AI models that process language or images by emulating natural selection, which could reduce the need for human intervention.
In parallel, Sakana AI’s partnership with NVIDIA focuses on progressing AI research, leveraging data centers in Japan, and nurturing the AI community within the country.
Through this partnership, Sakana AI will gain early access to NVIDIA’s data centres, which is crucial for conducting early-stage experiments and maintaining Japan’s competitive edge in AI innovation.
Despite Japan’s AI talent pool being less developed than those in China and the US, the collaboration with NVIDIA is expected to significantly bolster Japan’s capabilities in the field.
The collaboration is also expected to increase community engagement in Japan’s AI sector, with Sakana AI planning to host events, organise hackathons, and expand university outreach.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: “Countries are embracing Sovereign AI to capture and codify their data, culture and language through their own unique large language models.
“The team at Sakana AI is helping spur the democratisation of AI in Japan by developing cutting-edge foundation models to automate and speed up scientific discovery with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform.”
