Disrupting Japan gives you candid, in-depth insights from the startup founders, VCs, and leaders who are reshaping Japan.
Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
Claim This Podcastby Tim Romero
4.9(67 reviews)
264 episodes
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Disrupting Japan gives you candid, in-depth insights from the startup founders, VCs, and leaders who are reshaping Japan.
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🇺🇲
Publishing Since
9/2/2014
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Recent Episodes
June 22, 2026
The future of AI looks very different in 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,...
May 25, 2026
Why Japanese Femtech is so different
Host Tim Romero interviews Amina Sugimoto, founder of Fermata, about the unique challenges and social movement dynamics of Femtech in Japan.
April 27, 2026
The real Luddites would have loved AI
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most innovative founders and VCs. This is our 250th episode, and I wanted to give you something special; something I have been thinking about more and more as my career in startups and venture capital has developed. Leave a comment Today we are going to talk about a group of people who are perhaps the most reviled and maligned by technologists and innovators worldwide. People who stand in opposition to everything innovators hold dear. Today we are going to talk about the Luddites — those individuals who through a combination of ignorance and shortsightedness opposed technology and change. But that’s not really true. The Luddites were not who you think they were. In fact, almost everything you have ever been told about them is wrong. In truth, the Luddites were not really opposed to new technology. Not even when it threatened their livelihoods. There is growing concern today about AI taking our jobs, but if AI had emerged 220 years ago, the Luddites would have embraced it. Far more important, they would have held a much better understanding of the true dangers posed by today's new business models than do most of the AI advocates or critics talking about it today. Although the Luddites are accused of opposing the very technology that resulted in the incredible progress and the rise of living standards that we have experienced over the past 200 years, that’s simply not the case. In fact, as you’ll see, although the higher living standards and shared prosperity enabled by the technology of the industrial revolution are undeniable, we actually have the Luddites, and not the technology, to thank for that. The Luddite in the Mirror So who exactly were the Luddites? You have probably heard that they were cloth workers in late 18th century England who, early in the industrial revolution, saw their livelihoods threatened by the new textile factories, and they tried to shut down those factories by destroying automated looms and other textile equipment. That much is completely true. The important question, however, and the one with a wildly misunderstood answer is “Why?” “Why were the Luddites breaking machines and shutting down textile factories?” The mythology is that Luddites rejected the new technology because they benefited from the old system. Rather than embrace technology which would lift millions out of poverty, lengthen lifespans, and lead to greater shared prosperity, the Luddites selfishly wanted the world to stay as it was. They were backward-looking rubes who simply could not see the bigger picture. And that, all of that, every single word of that, is simply wrong. If anything, the Luddites were alarmed because they saw the big picture far too clearly. So let’s take a quick step back into the world of the Luddites and see just how much like us they really were. And also see that although the technologies are completely different, how the new business models of the industrial age changed society in very much the same ways as the new business models of our emerging AI age. As the industrial revolution was gaining momentum in the closing decades of the 1700s, textiles were one of England’s most important and profitable exports, and they were manufactured using what was called the “domestic system.” Textile workers worked with their own machines in their own workshops. Some of the more enterprising had multiple machines and employed others. The work was distributed, done mostly at home, and the finished product delivered to merchants. This system is where the English term “cottage industry”comes from. By and large, these clothworkers did not have leisurely or even particularly comfortable lives, but it was a better living than agricultural work and much better than most of the newly emerging factory jobs. What these clothworkers did have, however, and what they were very afraid of losing, was a degree of economic freedom. The freedom to negotiate fair prices with their customers and, based on those negotiations, the freedom to decide what and how much they would produce. These proto-Luddites had no problems with machinery or technology. They used and maintained machinery. They experimented with and developed technology. What they objected to was not the new technology, but the new business models. To understand the Luddite’s position here, we need to understand that new technology was not the only thing powering England’s industrial expansion. These new factories were also powered by some of the most horrific forms of child labor imaginable. Children as young as six were forced to work 14 to 16-hour shifts crawling under machinery to recover scraps of cloth and reaching into running machines to untangle threads and remove debris. Some business owners even made deals with the government to take orphans off public hands and put them to work in their factories. And to be absolutely clear, these children were not paid. They were given enough food to keep them alive and only allowed to sleep a few hours a day. When children tried to escape, they were brought back in chains. These children would either die in one of the frequent industrial accidents or they would literally be worked to death. Working conditions could have easily been made safer, but pausing or turning off the machines would lower profits. The whole point of this innovative new business model was that it produced textiles continuously, 24/7. Things like idling machines or buying safety equipment would cut directly into shareholder value. Since there were always more bodies to feed the machines, it would have been unfair to the shareholders not to leverage that resource. No one knows how many children died in those factories. Neither the politicians nor the business owners benefited from that kind of record keeping. Slaughtering children has always been bad optics. Today we usually try to gloss over this behavior with the rejoinder that “attitudes and values were different back then”, but that’s not really the case. Even by the standards of the day, these new business practices were appalling. Many religious, social, and political groups were outraged and worked to force business owners to respect social norms and basic human decency. Many business owners did, of course, but they were quickly outcompeted and bankrupted by the business owners who chose not to. Working children to death was just so damn profitable. William Blake famously referred to these factories as the “Dark Satanic Mills”. Our proto-Luddites were not simply worried that their way of life was changing, but that it was changing into something horrible. The Broken Legal Shield It’s also important to understand that these business owners were actually breaking the law. Not just social norms, but the actual law. Labor protections in that era were not exactly robust, but some basic rules did exist. When challenged on their illegal labor practices, the new business owners responded in exactly the same way today’s new business owners do. They claimed that since no one imagined this new technology when those labor laws were created, they clearly did not apply to them. Forcing them to abide by the law would only slow progress. And just like today’s business owners, they had legions of supportive journalists and caravans of lobbying money to amplify that message. It’s quite impressive how effective and unchanged this strategy has remained. Over the past decade, Uber and other gig-economy companies executed this playbook exactly. They claimed that since their new technology did not exist when the relevant labor and licensing laws were passed, those laws should not apply to their new business model. They argued that if they were forced to pay minimum wage or comply with licensing and insurance laws, their business model would collapse and that would slow the march of progress for everyone. Interestingly, that playbook worked well in the US, but not everywhere. There are many markets where Uber is required to follow local labor and licensing laws. And you know what? Uber does fine in those markets. They are a little less profitable, of course, but they do fine. Their business model never required them to ignore labor and licensing laws, it is simply more profitable if they can do so. For over 200 years, business owners have used this slight of hand to sidestep both criticism and regulation. They simply assert that any criticism of their business practices is actually hostility towards and fear of progress and technology. Right now, this “old laws don’t apply to new technology” grift is being used by AI companies to deflect copyright concerns. I’m not talking about using copyrighted works to train AI. Admittedly, that’s a grey area. Rather, I‘m talking about the simple fact that I can pay OpenAI $20, and with a bit of prompting, it will sell me all kinds of copyright-infringing images and whole passages lifted from books and screenplays. That is straight, blackletter-law copyright infringement for profit. It makes no difference what the user does with the image they paid OpenAI to generate. OpenAI is violating the law when they sell it without permission. It’s a commercial transaction. The AI companies usually imply that the customer is at fault for requesting the images. But again, No! The law is clear. Asking a company to create a work that could infringe on someone's copyright is not illegal. However, creating and selling that work without securing the necessary rights? That’s illegal. My point here is not that AI companies should be shut down for copyright infringement. I don’t think they should be. The point is that we need to stop falling for this 220-year-old slight of hand where the existence of a new technology is used as an excuse to violate any laws or social norms that might reduce profitability. I’m not anti-technology. I’m just anti-bullshit. ...
264 total episodes available with 39 transcripts
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