Recently, Tokyo-based AI research and development company Sakana AI announces successful completion of over $100 million Series A roundFinancingThe main investors in this round of financing include New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures and Lux Capital, while NVIDIA Also involved.
Sakana AI aims to advance AI research through nature-inspired intelligence and foundational models, particularly in the areas of evolutionary optimization and sparsity.
Sakana AI’s partnership with NVIDIA will provide it with advanced GPU technology, which is critical to achieving its development goals. Through this partnership, Sakana AI will also gain access toJapanaccess to AI data centers, thereby enhancing their ability to experiment locally and drive AI innovation.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said countries are embracing sovereign AI to capture and encode their own data, culture and language through unique large-scale language models. He noted that Sakana AI is promoting the democratization of AI in Japan, using NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform to develop cutting-edge foundational models to accelerate the process of scientific discovery.
Sakana AI’s collaboration with NVIDIA focuses on three areas: advancing research, leveraging NVIDIA’s data center infrastructure, and enhancing Japan’s AI community. Sakana AI also plans to fill Japan’s AI talent gap and promote local talent development through events and university outreach.
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said that while many labs around the world are trying to catch up and train basic models using the same technology as other labs, Sakana AI is showing an innovative path. He is very excited about this collaboration and looks forward to advancing this journey with NVIDIA.
Sakana AI aims to address major challenges facing Japan, such as population decline and geopolitical tensions. The company hopes to build a world-class AI laboratory to develop technologies that can support Japan's future competitiveness and help solve the country's pressing problems.