Top 10 Most Valuable Unicorns in Japan 2022
Japan is the one country known as the rest of the start-ups because it has worked most with more than a hundred billion companies, 226 in 2021. This country’s companies are backed by advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, data analysis, and new eco-friendly materials; it has overseas investors who have also spent stepped out funding of new players, fuelling growth and valuations in the Unicorns.
Foreign investors open bank companies in the more critical stages of the start phase – where the business is set to grow through an initial public offering inside. There were 81 companies worth more than 10 billion. Find the recent growth, and Japan remains a relatively small market for start-ups. The country has added to unicorns this year and now has eight unicorns listed among the ranks of acquiring worth $1 billion or more. It also has fewer unicorns than the United Kingdom of South Korea, which has 34 and 11, respectively.
According to the research, there are currently eight companies in Japan that consider silicon’s status. All of these companies have at least $1 billion, and these companies are all private and meet the three criteria, which are very important to be considered for that level. It has plenty of unicorns, but they take longer to gestate than their American cousins.
Start-ups in the country are attracting increasing interest from overseas investors as the government starts to shake off the reputation of a Unicorn venture backwater. Initially, the country did not have a lot of unicorns because of the primary reason for the lack of investment in Japanese start-ups compared to other countries.
The start-up ecosystem of this country is gaining new levels of attention as start-up firms are increasingly born from the most elite Japanese universities, attracting top Japanese talent and collaborating with incumbent Japanese companies. Several successful companies run by founding this in Japan and worth more than $1 billion the coming increasingly hard to avoid. A lot of these companies performed it within the last five years. Let’s discuss each of the companies and detail.
1. Preferred Networks
It is one platform that specializes in building artificial intelligence-led solutions that easily automate and optimize your business processes. It creates the real-world solution that solves the complex industry problems with cutting–edge technologies, including robotics, deep learning, and advanced analytics.
It is a platform with highly integrated software and hardware devices such as automobiles and robots more intelligent. If we have a smart device that can flex with ever-changing environments and situations, we will be able to sense the physical world in real-time and calculate the natural world itself. It aims to use the kind of technology to discover a world we have never seen and do not know yet about. The technology Park is the company’s strength as it contributes to the world with the most powerful technology that only this company can achieve.
Deep learning has the power to respond flexible and highly to the complex kind of events and environmental changes that cannot be handled by conventional rule-based programming. The strength of preferred networks is introducing the cutting – H technology that combines this deep learning with the deep knowledge in various specialized fields.
To contribute maximum to the World technologies that can only be realized by ourselves, we develop core technologies for deep learning, build large–scale computational clusters and explore various specialized fields such as robotics and life science beyond the thinking.
It has undertaken multiple projects like innovation and manufacturing since 2015. The preferred network has been working on the sophistication of FAN Hussey and industrial robots and machine tools and from 2019 on the optimization and automation of the OS and large–scale oil refining plants. It has a unique kind of business area where the aspect of deep understanding is an entirely new information technology and has the full potential to innovate in all of the significant industrial fields.
It has worked with world-leading organizations and companies to innovate in various areas. It is essential to pursue cutting-edge technology and research areas where technology can change to make a more significant impact. In 2014, Daisuke Okanohara, Morikawa Hiroyuki, Nishitobs Jiro and Toru Nishikawa established it.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | Preferred Networks Inc. |
| Industries | Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, Internet of Things & Machine Learning |
| Founder(s) | Daisuke Okanohara, Morikawa Hiroyuki, Nishitoba Jiro & Toru Nishikawa |
| Founded Date | 2014 |
| Total Funding Amount | $16.5 Billion |
| Investors | ENEOS & JXTG Holdings |
2. SmartNews
SmartNews is an application that brings curated news from trustworthy sources to your iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad. It was founded in 2012 by Kaisei Hamamoto and Ken Suzuki. It delivers the world’s best quality information to the people who need it. In this era of information overload, it always strives to provide quality information for our users through advanced algorithms and simple user interfaces.
The team members of this company believe that all the news should be trustworthy because their algorithms evaluate millions of articles, signals and human interactions to deliver the top 0.01% of stories that matter the most. Their news is always the most sustainable and even supports journalism’s quality and respects all content creators by sharing traffic and revenue.
It is a valuable contributor to societies and always makes a direct commitment to building a better world and even helps the content ecosystem thrive better. It takes leadership and acting responsibly, and even influencing others. It started as a relatively standard Japanese-oriented news curation service.
By looking at the website, SmartNews is a for-profit company with a stated goal of “discovering and delivering the best quality stories to the world.” It is an award-winning news app that is loved by millions of people. People can quickly join the international culture- clever work with intelligent people.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | SmartNews Inc. |
| Industries | Apps, Journalism, Media, Mobile & News |
| Founder(s) | Kaisei Hamamoto & Ken Suzuki |
| Founded Date | 2012 |
| Total Funding Amount | $410.3 Million |
| Investors | Asian Capital Alliance & JIC Venture Growth Investments |
3. SmartHR
A Japan-based HR SaaS company offers cloud-sourced personnel management software for businesses and organizations. This platform provides you to enter straightaway as required. It has centralized employee information management with the latest employees list corresponding to the various personnel and labour operations and the accumulated personnel data utilization. It works with some of the great features like employment contracts will sit as a computer without people.
At the same time, the employees also support the year and adjustments, the labour procedures and online space X. There are a lot of corporations so that you can use it according to your company at any time. SmartHR makes it easy to join the company and make employment contracts without people. Information can be entered directly by ploys, and the burden on the person’s discharge is reduced.
If you have a job offer, you have to join any company. First of all, SmartHR is the destination for you. It automatically makes various documents like the retirement and address change and the joining procedures. Making it paperless supports a very significant improvement in business efficiency. You can easily apply for social insurance and employment insurance from the Web, and you can also reduce the travel time to the government office, the mail-in cost and the transportation cost.
The employee information is included when joining any company aggregator, but the employee information is automatically updated every time a dependent change is performed. So you always have an up-to-date aeroplane flying in the database, which requires no more annoying employee management.
There is labour management task like that you are an adjust, retire, address change procedures and issuance of the payslips completed on the company’s Web and support the significant improvements that are required. It completed the valuation of $1.60 billion in June 2021 and has based its headquarters in Tokyo. This company was started in 2013 by Kensuke Naito and Shoji Miyata.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | SmartHR, Inc |
| Industries | Cloud Computing, Enterprise Software & Human Resource |
| Founder(s) | Kensuke Naito & Shoji Miyata |
| Founded Date | 2013 |
| Total Funding Amount | $194.3 Million |
| Investors | Whale Rock Capital Management & Sequoia Capital Global Equtiies |
4. Spiber
It is a Japanese biomaterials company researching synthetic spiders and all the other critical protein-based materials. It offers its services in biotechnology, building materials, life science and advanced materials. Element mounted in the close observation of the natural world is the company that has brewed the protein materials and produced them through a fermentation process that uses sugars and microbes rather than petrochemical or any animal-derived raw material.
It has some of the best clothing like this sweater, which features an all-new brewed protein and wool blend designed explicitly for outdoor use. It is made by combining the materials from the natural world with the brewed Protein and embodies a new style of sustainable production. It has various collections according to the summer, winter and spring seasons. Spiber works on the ultimate aim that it believes in the most rational way of turning happiness from a goal into a reality by maximizing the things which bring goodness to others.
The company, Spiber, works on the resolve, which is very steadfast and always up to the new challenges. It believes that the primary material is a Brewed Protein which represents a compelling contribution towards the shared endeavour to create a more sustainable future for humanity and nature, both now and for generations to come.
Brewed Protein Refers to the protein materials produced from the plant-derived biomass using Spiber’s proprietary fermentation process. Brewed Protein materials also offer several substantial environmental benefits designed to be non-reliant on petrochemicals as primary feedstock and do not create on or break down into persistent environmental microplastics.
The materials are expected to have considerably less impact on the marine ecosystem when compared to traditional plastic materials. Furthermore, it has a unique microbial fermentation technology used in the Brewed Protein production, which shows the considerable potential for avoiding ethical and environmental concerns like the greenhouse gas emissions, which are often associated with commonly used animal fibres. Since then, it started giving its services in 2007 and has delivered great comfort.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | Spiber, Inc |
| Industries | Adavnced Materials, Bioinformatics & Biotechnology |
| Founder(s) | Kazuhide Sekiyama & Sugahara Junichi |
| Founded Date | 2007 |
| Total Funding Amount | &910.9 Million |
| Investors | Tokyo Century & Satake Chemical Machinery |
5. Liquid Global
LiquidGlobal develops high-end software and hardware solutions to bring liquidity and efficiency to the cryptocurrency economy. It reached the status of a unicorn in April 2019, but its headquarters is based in Tokyo. With this platform, you can easily buy, trade crypto and even sell them and join the world’s most comprehensive and secure trading platform. You can easily buy and sell bitcoins, XRP, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies with crypto or fiat.
It has a 24×7 support system that is always ready around the corner to solve all of the customers’ problems. You can quickly join the community and discuss with one of their global communities. You can easily download an application from the Google Store or App Store and have the best trading experience. The company has products like Liquid Earn, Spot Trading and Margin Trading.
It has the most advanced kind of trading where you can trade your spot on margin markets with the most advanced funding options, lightning-fast execution and deep liquidity. You can manage all your positions easily with their into dative AAPI, trading platform and the advance order options.
It has the advanced proprietary multi-market order technology, which enhances the tightening spreads, reducing slippage and liquidity. It is an utterly user-friendly platform built for everyone from beginners to probe and manage the digital assets using a combination of cold wallets and multi-party communication technology. Would accept deposits of the major currencies, including USD, UR, SGD, CAD, AUD and JPY. It provides its services in fintech, information services, information technology, IT management, Bitcoin, and Cryptocurrency.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | QUIOINE Pte. Ltd. |
| Industries | Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Finanicial Services, FinTech & IT Management |
| Founder(s) | Mario Gomez Lozado, Mike Kayamori & Tanaka Masaaki |
| Founded Date | 2014 |
| Total Funding Amount | $252.6 Million |
| Investors | FTX Exchange & Bitmain |
6. Playco
It is the one platform that builds the cross-platform, offering free to play titles for gamers worldwide. It has games that run on desktops, Web and iOS devices. It brings the world’s first instant-play gaming company by creating games that billions of people can play together. This company has partnered closely with platforms like snap, Weibo and Facebook, and more to build the best games that begin of people can enjoy.
It started as a mobile gaming start-up which day is $100 million in series funding to make an application that lets the players instantly lose the games that run on web links on any platform. It is a new mobile game that is created by game closure co-founder Michael Carter and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron and game producers Takeshi Otsuka and Teddy Cross.
The founder, Carter, believes that enabling the instant play option means games themselves had to be pretty straightforward, at least at first glance. He also acknowledged that it’s very unusual for a start-up to raise so much money in its Series A funding. Still, he has also claimed that Play, being more ambitious with fundraising, allowed the company to grow their team from 0 to 75 people quickly.
“Ultimately, as we build up the portfolio, we think about what makes the game accessible to anyone on the planet, any ethnicity, any language,” stated Michael Carter. The company raised a hundred million dollars in a series led by Sequoia Capital and Angel Investor Josh Buckley. It served immensely in the sectors of Video Streaming, Online Games, Gaming and Gamification.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | Playco Global, Inc. |
| Industries | Gamification, Gaming & Online Games |
| Founder(s) | Justin Waldron, Michael Carter, Takeshi Otsuka & Teddy Cross |
| Founded Date | 2020 |
| Total Funding Amount | $140 Million |
| Investors | Meta & Digital Garage |
7. Triple-1
It is the only blocking technology development company in Japan. It is constantly in the process of developing KAMIK is ready, and KAMIKAZD2, which are dedicated checks for mining one of the Blockchain technologies, and GOKU, and artificial intelligence processors for deep learning.
It is on the word of innovating in the mining of Blockchain technologies, TRIPLE-1 Focusing on reducing the use of power consumption has traditionally been a critical issue in mind. By improving efficiency, the service will reduce consumption by more than 50% while maintaining the same size as conventional ships, thus contributing to the conservation of energy resources and the economy.
The introduction of one of their chip, KAMIKAZE, shook the world in 2018 because it boldly adopted the earliest 7nm process, which was full of risks, and it even changed the industry’s common sense. It was a new design that finally realized measures against variations in the process of 7nm that anyone could do. It has given a widespread to the artificial intelligence field.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | TRIPLE-1 Co, Ltd. |
| Industries | Cryptocurrency, Manufacturing & Mining Technology |
| Founder(s) | Hattori Hiroshi & Ozaki Kenichi |
| Founded Date | 2006 |
| Total Funding Amount | NA |
| Investors | Acquired |
8. Clean Planet
It is a company that conducted additional research on clean energy and quantum hydrogen energy. Their quantum hydrogen energy is a next-generation clean energy technology that efficiently uses hydrogen as the fuel and even delivers an enormous energy density of more than 1,000 times that of gasoline. The human civilization aspect has achieved significant and explosive growth in the past two centuries through the invention of the steam engine.
The internal combustion of the engine led to global industrialization and urbanization. It has successfully worked across the domains of universities, civil society, countries, and all the public and private sectors. Green Planet has been the first step towards developing safe and secure quantum hydrogen energy that is over a thousand times more efficient in heat energy than the chemical combustion of hydrogen.
Since then, it has been researching more about this new energy, including participation in a NEDO – funded project in 2015 and starting building industrial partnerships in 2019. It has the most Advanced Innovation Laboratory at Mikamine based in the Research Centre for Electron Photon Science of Tohoku University, and they’re Clean and product-based in Kawasaki. They are working to solidify the applications of this advanced technology further.
Components and models include the unit models manufacturers. It has the technological line license, which has planned manufacturers, industrial furnace and dryer manufacturers, boiler machine manufacturers, and heavy electrical manufacturers. Then comes the end-users with industrial use of energy, steel, ceramics, chemistry, electronic materials, material processing and agriculture. The second is consumer use which includes the household, hotels, hospitals, extensive facilities (Airports, Stations, Shopping Malls), Local Energy and Factories.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | Clean Planet Co, Ltd. |
| Industries | Clean Tech, Energy & Environmental Consulting |
| Founder | Hideki Yoshino |
| Founded Date | 2012 |
| Total Funding Amount | $996.2 Million |
| Investors | Miura Co, Ltd. & Mitsubishi Estate |
9. TBM
The material is called LIMEX, which is made of limestone. It is a new material that can be used as an alternative to paper and plastic, and it is attracting a great deal of attention from an environmental perspective. TBM has already started its global development and has registered patents in more than 30 countries, including Japan, US and China.
Besides that, TDM is also developing a material called “CircleX”, which contains more than 50% of the recycled materials and an e-commerce site called “ZAIMS”, which handles LINEX products. LIMEX Pellet is made by heating and needing calcium carbonate powder, polyolefin-based thermoplastic resin and various additives, and pooling the uniformly dispersed composite material at an appropriate temperature to achieve a uniform size.
It is manufactured by cutting shapes and can be used in a variety of moulding methods and also for the existing equipment. It significantly reduces the amount of petroleum used compared to conventional petroleum-derived plastic and can contribute to conserving limited petroleum resources. The company’s product can easily be recycled with recycling equipment and a single material, which is a repellent of scrap generated in manufacturing.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | TBM, Co, Ltd. |
| Industries | Mnaufacturing & Renewable Energy |
| Founder(s) | Momo Nakatani, Sakamoto Koji, Sumi Yuichiro, Tetsuya Imamura & Yamasaki Nobuyoshi |
| Founded Date | 2011 |
| Total Funding Amount | $22.6 Billion |
| Investors | SK Group & SK Siltron |
10. Mobility Technologies
It is a provider of taxi booking services called TaxiJio. Mobility technology has been developing both software and hardware in transportation and mobility based on its Japan taxi system. The company creates not only taxi systems but also the infrastructure for new public transportation systems. It has been specializing in the mobility-related business, like providing a vehicle allocation system for the different taxi operators.
It is considered a power of technology that has evolved mobility in all ages. Until now, humankind has improved the speed and quantity of transportation through the different technological innovations in materials and power technologies with a network of about 100 000 units is considered the number one taxi application that started in September 2020. It provides a quick ride experience with taxi vehicles, real-time location information linkage, and advanced vehicle allocation logic.
It also includes crew support solutions to fetch better feedback. It has specialists from Various fields, introducing the working environment of mobility technologies like the values of each member, welfare programmes and the organizational culture. The recruitment team includes their engineers, designers, data analysts, test engineers, marketing teams, and corporate teams. It recognizes the importance of protecting personal information and complies with the act on the protection of personal data and the world to handle and protect the privacy policy adequately.
The company offers information about various services like advertising, promotion and marketing related issues. It looks after the personal information of all of the users as they will not handle any of that information beyond the scope that is necessary to achieve the purpose of use without obtaining the consent of the person, except when permitted by the Personal Information Protection Law and other laws and regulations.
Company Overview
| Legal Name | Mobility Technologies, Co, Ltd. |
| Industries | Accounting, Automotive & Transportation |
| Founder(s) | NA |
| Founded Date | 1977 |
| Total Funding Amount | $342.7 Million |
| Investors | Dentsu Group & NTT DoCoMo |
Japan’s economy surged back into growth levels in the fourth quarter of 2021. Consumer spending rebounded during an autumn respite from the pandemic that briefly allowed life to return to something close to normal. But the good news is likely to be followed, once again, by bad as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus drove consumers back indoors and disrupted manufacturing during the winter months.
In the October-to-December period, the country’s economy, the third-largest after the United States and China, grew by 5.4 per cent, government data showed on Tuesday. A quarterly rise of 1.3 per cent followed a contraction in the previous three-month period when economic output shrank at a revised annualized rate of 0.7 per cent. The strong quarter capped Japan’s first year of economic growth since 2018.
It was a rare bright spot for an economy struggling with slow growth even before the virus hit, amid slumping demand for exports and trade frictions between the United States and China. Japan is considered to the largest and most developed economies in the world. It has a well-educated, dynamic workforce, and its large, affluent population makes it one of the world’s biggest consumer markets.
Japan’s economy was the world’s second-largest (behind the US) from 1968 until 2010 when China overtook it. Its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016 was estimated to be USD 4.7 trillion, and its population of 126.9 million enjoys a high standard of living, with a per capita GDP of just below USD 40,000 in 2015.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
