According to a report by the Asahi Shimbun on Saturday,JapanGenerative AI Startups Sakana AI A new major investment is about to be received, which will bring the company's valuation to about 180 billion yen (about 8.3 billion yuan). Driven by the global AI investment wave, this means that a new "unicorn" company will be born in Japan.
"Unicorns" are unlisted companies with a valuation of more than US$1 billion (about RMB 7.276 billion).Google's AI researchers launch Sakana AI in Tokyo, which studies basic AI models for generating text and images, has a "pioneering" technique for intersecting existing models with each other to create high-performance AI models.
Sakana AI’s major investors, including venture capitalists who have made early investments in companies such as OpenAI, will coordinate their investment in Sakana AI by the end of this month. Investment of approximately 20 billion yen(Currently about 923 million RMB). Sakana AI is reportedly going to become Japan’sFastest-growing unicorns.
▲ Image source: Sakana AI, generated by its EvoSDXL-JP graphic model
As previously reported, market research firm CB Insights released a report earlier this month, data showing that as of the end of April this year, there were 37 "unicorn" companies in the field of generative AI.The number of AI unicorns has almost doubled in the past year, compared to 20 at the end of April last year., the trend of targeting new generation of potential technologies is pushing up corporate valuations.
American companies still account for 90% of AI unicorns, and among the 17 new companies added in the past year,have 10 have their primary base outside the United States.
China has added 5 unicorn companies in the past year.Includes Dark Side of the Moon, MiniMax, Zero One Everything, Baichuan Intelligence and Zhipu AI, all of these companies have received investment from Alibaba Group.