‘They’re sweating’: Why Japanese giants are pouring money into Silicon Valley startups |
‘They’re sweating’: Why Japanese giants are pouring money into Silicon Valley startups
Japan has long gone its own way on technology, even inspiring its own term, “Galapagos syndrome,” for products and services that thrive at home yet go nowhere abroad. Now, the country’s corporate giants are worried they’re about to miss another technology wave, and are writing big checks to make sure they don’t.
On Tuesday, Pegasus Tech Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based investor, said it will quadruple the corporate venture fund it manages for Japanet, one of Japan’s largest mail-order and television shopping networks, to $200 million. That follows an earlier decision by auto supplier Aisin to double its Pegasus-managed fund to $100 million.
It’s the latest sign that legacy Japanese companies, long stereotyped as laggards in digital transformation, are racing to tap the AI boom. “They’re sweating,” Anis Uzzaman, the founder and CEO of Pegasus, tells Fortune. “They know the AI revolution is happening. They’re behind the U.S. and the Europeans when it comes to adoption.”
Pegasus offers what it calls “venture-capital-as-a-service,” administering corporate venture capital for large companies, primarily in Asia, and connecting them to startups its clients would struggle to reach on their own.
“Companies are getting........