Sakana AI

Sakana AI is a frontier AI R&D company founded in Tokyo in July 2023 by David Ha (CEO) and Llion Jones (CTO) — both former Google Brain researchers and co-authors of the original Transformer paper — together with Ren Ito (Chairman). The name sakana (fish) reflects a philosophy of nature-inspired intelligence, where collective behavior emerges from many individuals, much like a school of fish.

Rather than scaling a single monolithic model, the company combines and coordinates many models through evolutionary methods. Its best-known results include The AI Scientist, which automates the research paper pipeline; Fugu, a multi-agent orchestration model that routes work across specialized models; and Namazu, tuned for the Japanese language and Japanese business practices.

In November 2025 it raised a $135M Series B at a $2.65B valuation, making it Japan's most valuable unicorn. The round combined Japanese financial institutions such as MUFG with global investors including Khosla Ventures, NEA, and Lux Capital. The company works with large Japanese enterprises and the public sector to build AI suited to Japan's needs.