Sakana AI
Tokyo-based AI company founded in 2023 by David Ha, Llion Jones and Ren Ito. It builds model-orchestration and Japanese-language AI products and works with major Japanese financial groups.
Industry: Foundation models and applied AI | Location: Tokyo, Japan | Founded: 2023 | Total Funding: USD 436.6M
About Sakana AI
Sakana AI is a Tokyo-based artificial intelligence company that describes its mission as building frontier AI in Japan. Its legal entity is Sakana AI K.K., headquartered at Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower in Minato-ku, Tokyo.
The company was founded in July 2023 by David Ha, Llion Jones and Ren Ito. Ha is chief executive, Jones is chief technology officer and Ito is chairman. Its company page also lists Ai Fujiki as chief financial officer and Jürgen Schmidhuber as chief scientific advisor. TechCrunch describes Ha and Jones as former Google researchers and Ito as a former Mercari and Stability AI executive.
Sakana's site lists Fugu, a service that orchestrates several frontier language models to balance cost and performance, in Ultra, Cyber and Max variants; Namazu, a model specialised for Japanese; Marlin, an autonomous research agent; and translation and chat applications. Its research includes The AI Scientist, published in Nature in 2026, and ShinkaEvolve, which it released as open source.
Its enterprise work centres on finance. The site describes an AI Lending Expert built with MUFG Bank under a multiyear partnership (March 2026), proposal-generation work for SMBC Group (April 2026) and a wealth management project with Daiwa Securities Group (August 2026). TechCrunch reported plans to expand into industrial, manufacturing and government sectors in 2026.
Sakana announced a 30 million dollar seed round led by Lux Capital, with Khosla Ventures, on 16 January 2024. A Series A of about 200 million dollars, led by New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures and Lux Capital, followed on 4 September 2024. The Series B was announced on 17 November 2025; TechCrunch reported 20 billion yen, about 135 million dollars, at a 2.65 billion dollar post-money valuation, and Sakana's page, updated in April 2026, gives about 32 billion yen, or 200 million dollars. Sakana says it will use the money for research, its applied team and expansion into defense, intelligence and manufacturing.
TechScoop reported on 30 June 2026 that Sakana had launched Fugu, which Ha described as an orchestration system coordinating many AI models rather than a single larger model.
Leadership
- David Ha, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
- Llion Jones, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
- Ren Ito, Co-founder and Chairman
- Ai Fujiki, Chief Financial Officer
- Jürgen Schmidhuber, Chief Scientific Advisor