Sakana AI has Raised 20 Billion Yen in Series B Funding

Sakana AI, building a world-class AI research lab in Tokyo, led by David Ha, Llion Jones, and Ren Ito, has raised 20 Billion Yen (135 million US Dollars) from new and existing investors, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Khosla Ventures, Factorial, Macquarie Capital, Fundomo, Mouro Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Geodesic Capital, Lux Capital, Ora Global, MPower Partners, Shikoku Electric Power, and In-Q-Tel (IQT).

Record levels of capital are flowing into AI compute, often without sustainable economics, clear profitability, or regard for the immense energy being consumed in pursuit of ever-larger models. This raises a fundamental question about whether such an approach represents a viable future, especially for resource-constrained nations like Japan aiming to develop sovereign AI.

History suggests that intelligence emerges not from abundance but from limitation. Nature favors systems that achieve more with less, and human intelligence itself is a product of constraint rather than excess.

Sakana AI has focused on sustainable, efficient AI, evolving and combining existing models, automating AI research, and developing energy-efficient systems for edge devices. The company has also built a profitable enterprise business in Japan, deploying AI that delivers measurable returns. For a nation with limited resources and a shrinking workforce, a sustainable, innovation-led AI ecosystem offers the strongest path forward.

In two years, major advances have been made in frontier AI, applied AI, and Sovereign AI. Research achievements include self-evolving systems, efficient model-merging methods, new brain-inspired architectures, and automated research workflows.

Applied AI partnerships with leading Japanese institutions have delivered domain-specific solutions in finance, with expansion underway into defense, intelligence, and manufacturing. Rising demand for culturally aligned models has reinforced a focus on post-training as Japan’s most sustainable path to Sovereign AI.

New funding will accelerate frontier research, advance Sovereign AI optimization, scale applied deployments across key sectors, and support ecosystem-building through strategic partnerships and investment.