Photo/Illutration Sakana AI’s logo. The red "sakana" (fish) represents the company aiming to be unique in its field. (Provided by Sakana AI)

Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based startup developing generative artificial intelligence, announced on Sept. 4 that it has received an investment from U.S. semiconductor giant Nvidia Corp.

Backed by the world’s largest AI chipmaker, the Japanese startup, which launched a year ago, is quickly making its mark in the industry.

Sakana AI has raised around 20 billion yen ($139 million) through a large-scale investment, which included U.S. venture capital firms.

While the amount Nvidia invested remains undisclosed, it is expected to become a major shareholder.

With this funding round, Sakana AI joins the ranks of unicorn startups with a value exceeding $1 billion.

Nvidia holds around 80 percent of the global market for graphics processing units used in data centers, which are essential for AI development and operation. This dominance makes the chipmaker the clear leader in AI semiconductors.

With this investment, Sakana AI will now have priority access to Nvidia’s latest GPUs.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement that Sakana AI is using Nvidia’s platform to develop cutting-edge foundation models and is helping spur the democratization of AI in Japan.

Some U.S. media outlets have reported that Nvidia is considering investing in ChatGPT-maker Open AI.

As Nvidia expands its investments in AI development companies, it appears to have chosen Sakana AI as its partner in Japan.

Sakana AI was founded in Tokyo in July last year by AI researchers who previously worked at Google in the United States.

The name “sakana” means fish in Japanese, and the single red one branching away from its school in the logo represents the company’s unique path in AI development.

The company develops foundation AI models that generate text and images, with a strength in combining existing models to produce high-performance AI models quickly and at a low cost. 

Evo-Ukiyoe is one of the startup's projects and involved training its AI to generate ukiyo-e-style pictures.  

In the overall AI development race, well-funded entities such as Google and OpenAI are currently in the lead.

However, concerns are growing over the rapid increase of power consumption and overheated investment in the sector.

In such a situation, the potential of Sakana AI, which takes a different approach with unique technologies, is raising expectations. 

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