Technology news from Japan in Q3 2024 – July, August & September – captured Japanese technology news items including: Hokkaido’s moves into semiconductor manufacturing; Fujitsu’s moves into quantum technologies; NVIDIA’s Japanese-focused LLMs, aiming to deliver local-language services; and many more.
Japan: September 2024 tech news
Japan: Bitcoin mining and renewable energy
September 2024 in Japanese tech
- Japan: Fujitsu and Riken are preparing for construction of Fugaku Next ‘zeta-class’ supercomputer, set to be 1000 times faster than today’s most advanced, at a cost of over $750M / full item
- Japan: An intro to Emulsion Flow Technologies, producing modular units to scale recycling of rare earth metals and critical minerals / full item
- Japan: In April, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Tech rolled out ‘metaverse student’ option, allowing ‘school refusers’ to attend and graduate / full item
- Japan: Tokyo Stock Exchange announces the first batch of tech firms to be supported by TSE Asia Startup Hub, focusing on promising Asian companies with ties to Japan / full item
- Japan: Financial Services Agency reportedly to reform Payment Services Act crypto-relevant gaming laws to make it easier for businesses to handle digital assets / full item
- Available now: ‘Adobe 2024 Digital Trends Asia Pacific and Japan‘, focusing on the impacts of artificial intelligence / full item
- Japan: Startup Horizon 2024 event from JETRO is set for November 15th, showcasing the startup ecosystem in Osaka, and the Kansai region and coinciding with Japan Innovation Week / full item
- Japan: An overview of Hokkaido’s moves into semiconductor manufacturing, touching on the Rapidus-IBM partnership for a 2nm semicon fabrication plant / full item
- Tier IV aims to operate self-driving taxis commercially in three locations in Tokyo by 2025, including Odaiba as well as other central Tokyo areas such as Shinjuku and Minato. / full item
- Japan’s Mizuho Bank invests $3.5M in 3DEO, US startup that manufactures metal parts using 3D metal printers / full item
- KDDI telecoms major and Sharp electronics firm partner for what may be Asia’s largest data center in Osaka, focusing on AI services / full item
- Japan: A brief look at Sakana, AI firm with a focus on a large number of small models that work together rather than on one large foundational AI model / full item
- Japan: Intel partners AIST for advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials R&D hub / full item
- Japan sets sights on faster, light-based photonics for data centers to facilitate build-out of facilities outside of metro and industrial areas / full item
- “Pacific Island nations, notably Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji, have become significant areas of geopolitical competition…” / full item
Adobe / eConsultancy: Digital trends – Asia Pacific & Japan
- Japan: An intro to 5 startups selected for the Global DeepTech Accelerator Osaka, part of the Kansai startup ecosystem / full item
- Japan: Deepfake cases jumped 28-fold last year, the fifth largest among 224 economies tracked / full item
- Japan: Tokyo Stock Exchange adds 21 VCs and 1 bank to TSE Asia Startup Hub, aiming to back Asia’s startups / full item
- Japan: Fujitsu and Osaka Uni Center for Quantum Info & Quantum Biology announce 2 new technologies, one cutting calculation time from 5 years to 10 hours. / full item
- Japan’s SBI Holdings financial conglomerate backs Singapore’s Oasys gaming-focused blockchain firm, looking at expanded uses for blockchain tech / full item
- Japan: Taiwan’s TSMC semiconductor chip-maker is on track to build a 3rd plant in Japan by 2030, with timeframe slowed due to availability of trained workforce / full item
- Thailand’s Krungsri and Japan’s MUFG ink MoU with banks from Vietnam, Indonesia and The Philippines to coordinate market entry for Thai firms across ASEAN / full item
- Taiwan’s National Development Fund and Japan’s Kyoto University Innovation Capital ink MOU to boost talent pool in a range of deep technology fields / full item
- Japan and Australia launch Pacific Digital Development Initiative, focused on Pacific Island nations infrastructure, telecoms, and information security. / full item
- India’s Tata Electronics inks MoU with Tokyo Electron Limited, accelerating production of semiconductor manufacturing equipment in Gujarat, and assembly & testing in Assam / full item
- Japan’s Bee Informatica completes seed round, raising near $500K with Funding Bee, a digital microfinance solution for SMEs in Malaysia / full item
- Country profiles for Australia, India, Japan and Singapore, via the cmspi ‘Payments Regulation in Asia’ report / full item
JP Morgan: Web3 – a new era for social commerce
August 2024 in Japanese tech
- Japan’s NTT and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom launch all-optical communications network between Tokyo and Taipei, achieving transmission across 3000km in 17 milliseconds / full item
- Japan: Toyota partners Idemitsu Kosan oil refiner for mass-production of solid-state batteries for EVs, aiming to market by 2027 / full item
Video: ‘Japan Startup Ecosystem with Shibuya Government’, a 30-minute discussion from July’s EDCON2024 Ethereum Development Conference / watch here
- Japan: Isuzu Motors partners software firm, Applied Intuition, to jointly develop self-driving trucks capable of full automation, targeting Japanese highways for 2027 / full item
- “Yamakoshi [village] has attracted 1,700 ‘digital citizens’ through the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in an initiative aimed at supporting and sustaining its aging population.” / full item
- NVIDIA rolls out 4 Japan-focused microservices, enabling developers to build and deploy high-performing generative AI applications based on local languages and culture / full item
- Japan: Silicon Valley’s 500 Global VC rolls out Cohort 2 of bespoke Venture Capital Unlocked program for Japanese VCs, partnering with Tokyo Metropo Gov’t & JETRO trade organization / full item
- Japan: Vietnam’s FPT expands in Japan with $200M for cloud AI services and solutions for businesses, looking to launch in 2025 and building on NVIDIA partnership / full item
- Download: ‘Say Watt Now? Can Bitcoin mining accelerate the rollout of renewable energy in Japan?’ from Yuri Group / full item
- Japan: “…workforce re-engagement of just 10% of the economically inactive hikikomori group through the metaverse could add at least $240 billion to the Japanese economy by 2050…” / full item
- Japan’s Toshiba to make corporate VC investment in Europe-US Quantonation II fund, aiming to boost R&D and development of quantum-based services / full item
- Japan: Government to apply foreign trade regulations to wide range of technologies, including chip-making equipment, in bid to secure stable supply chains into the future / full item
- Japan Southeast Asia Innovation Platform and Okinawa Institute of Science & Tech ink MOU to boost startup communities in Okinawa, targeting wider Asia growth / full item
3rd Quarter: Critical technologies in the news, globally
- “…Japan can inject about $10BN a year into its economy if even 10% of the nation’s 1.5M hikikomori re-engage in the workforce via the metaverse.” / full item
- Japan: Techstars Tokyo accelerator unveils 12 startups selected for the 3-month program, which culminates in a November pitch event / full item
- Japan: “VC investment by overseas players totaled 22.5 billion yen ($152 million) in the first half [of 2024], up 69%…” / full item
- Japan: Sakana AI’s ‘The AI Scientist’ research system found unexpectedly attempting to modify its own code to extend time needed to work on a problem / full item
- “Of the 1,729 local municipalities in Japan, 744 are ‘likely to vanish’ by 2050, according to a report released [in April] at a symposium by the Population Strategy Council…” / full item
- Innovation Leaders Summit, Asia’s largest open innovation matching event, is set for December, matching Japanese firms with businesses and startups / full item
- Japan: Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm to establish its first Asia office in Tokyo / full item
- Japan: Interstellar Technologies raised new $21M round for rocket and communications satellite development, moving to vertical-integration model used by SpaceX / full item
- Japan: Rapidus preps for April 2025 test production of 2-nanometer semiconductors, backed by IBM as investor and client / full item
- Taiwan-Japan firms launch CDIB Cross Border Innovation Fund, raising $62M towards $75M-$100M target for investments in tech and lifestyle sectors / full item
- SoftBank, SK Networks, LG Electronics, Hanwha Financial and Thai conglomerate join for $130M Alpha Intelligence Fund, focusing on East and SE Asia / full item
- “15 Japanese companies including Isuzu Motors and trading house Sojitz will receive government funding to create supply chains in Southeast Asia…”; semiconductors a key element / full item
- Japan’s Incubate Fund Asia VC firm closes 3rd fund with corpus of $30M, with 80% focus on India’s early-stage startups / full item
- Real Madrid Next Accelerator for Asia unveils 7 startups selected for collaboration / full item
- Philippines: Japan’s Zip Infrastructure approved for feasibility survey for ‘sky tram’ autonomous aerial tramway in mountain resort city of Baguio / full item
GITEX Asia Tech Conference & Expo: April 2025 in Singapore
July 2024 in Japanese tech
- Japan: Shinryo Fund sets sights on $6.7M corpus revolving around Okinawa both as a startup source and as a gateway to Japan and wider Asia / full item
- Japan’s Generative AI Accelerator Challenge to provide $180M in AI skills aid across SE Asia, alongside goal of training 100K ASEAN citizens across 5 years / full item
- Japan: An interview overview of Rapidus’ goal of becoming a global leader in the highest-value corner of the semiconductors market, the logic chips space / full item
- Japan: Global Pitch Competition is set for October 9 & 10 in Fukuoka City / full item
- Japan to help Philippines with 5G as alternative to Chinese tech for Indo-Pacific infrastructure, building on Palau and Cambodia initiatives, potentially later adding Indonesia and Vietnam / full item
- Japan: 2025 OIST Innovation Accelerator applications are open, from Okinawa Institute of Science & Tech / full item
- Japan’s Softbank Group has acquired UK’s AI chip accelerator firm, Graphcore / full item
- Download: ‘Combating Disinformation – An Agenda for US-Japan Cooperation’ from the Center for Strategic and International Studies / full item
- Japan: Semiconductor makers including Sony, Mitsubishi and Toshiba planning near $31BN in capital investments to 2029, boosting production of power devices and image sensors / full item
- Japan: Toshiba partners Rohm Co semiconductor manufacturer for $636M investment over 3 years, looking at chips for EV power control and industrial devices / full item
- Japan: Sei Foundation launches $50M Japan Ecosystem Fund focusing on Web3 gaming, social, and entertainment use cases for blockchain tech / full item
- Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Ass’n calls for amended legislation to protect intellectual property rights in response to AI service copyright infringements / full item
- Japan: Softbank and NEC, info-tech and electronics multinational, ink alliance for biometric authentication to speed digital transformation for enterprises and local governments / full item
- Japan; Toyota Motor to build an EV battery plant in Kyushu, a region dedicated to electric vehicle-related technologies and overseas firms / full item
- NTT Startup Challenge 2024 edition opens for applications from across SE Asia / full item
- Japan: An overview of the Space Strategy Fund launched earlier this year, a $6 billion, 10-year initiative to boost space-related R&D / full item
- Japan: “…suborbital launch by TiSpace has faced regulatory hurdles… amid questions over whether Japan should embrace overseas business… to double the size of its… space industry over the next decade” / full item
- Japan’s Axelspace Holdings gains Epson and Epson X Investment Corp subsidiary backing in development, manufacturing and operation of microsatellites / full item
- Japan: SoftBank to re-develop soon-to-be-closed LCD panel site in Osaka into large-scale data center, seeing a range of opportunities in hosted services / full item
- Australian National University inks agreement with Japan’s Fujitsu for a new quantum research facility ‘with ambitions to build an onsite quantum computer’ / full item
- A brief intro to 8 bioengineering startups, including firms from Japan and China working on alternative proteins, collagen products and industrial biocatalysts / full item
- India’s Zypp Electric secures $15M funding led by Japan’s ENEOS energy conglomerate with goal of taking electric vehicle rental services to wider SE Asia markets / full item
- South Korea: Samsung secures a 2-nanometer AI chip foundry and package order from Japan’s Preferred Networks Inc AI applications developer / full item
- An overview of the recent Japan-ASEAN Startup Business Matching Fair 2024 which showcased more than 60 startups from 6 countries, and the new ASEAN LINK business growth service / full item
- Australia’s Northern Territory Gov’t and Japan Organisation for Metals and Energy Security ink 2 MOUs to boost critical minerals and energy cooperation / full item
- Japan’s Toyota, partnering with China’s state-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group, looks to launch autonomous driving-enabled EV in China, hoping to recover from sales slump / full item
- Download: ‘Anchoring the Bay of Bengal in a Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ from India’s Observer Research Foundation, and Global Policy Journal / full item
- Palau: Japan’s Soramitsu, firm behind Cambodia’s Bakong central bank digital currency, to build Pacific island nation of Palau’s digital gateway to bond markets / full item
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