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Top 15 Local Startup Investors in Japan in May 2025

Last updated: May 2025 A list of 15 angel investors and VC (Venture Capital) funds that invest in Local startups based in Japan. We rank investors based on the number of investments they made in Local companies from Japan. We update this investor list every month.

Top 15 Local Startup Investors in Japan in May 2025

Investor	Local Japan investments
Global Brain Corporation	4
ANRI	3
Incubate Fund	3
Chiba Dojo	3
SBI Investment	2
ORIX Ventures	1
Adways	1
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group	1
STRIVE	1
GMO VenturePartners	1
Takaya Shinozuka	1
JAFCO	1
Mizuho Capital	1
OPT Ventures	1
Recruit Strategic Partners	1

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Investor list

Global Brain Corporation is a venture capital firm that invests in companies from seed or early to pre-IPO startups. Global Brain has invested in 300+ startups from seed/early to pre-IPO startups and achieved 25 IPOs and 61 M&As as a result of providing hands-on support services and resources to its portfolio startups. Global Brain hasmanaged a pure investment fund as well as multiple corporate venture capital funds partnered together with tier 1 public companies of telecom, real estate development, financial service, beverages, agriculture food, logistics, and electronic devices.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Software, Artificial Intelligence
Series A, Series B, Funding Round
Japan, United States, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

10x — 10x provides One-stop service from meal planning to grocery shopping.
Otetsutabi — Otetsutabi is a regional revitalization platform that offers the opportunity for participants to help at accommodations and breweries in rural areas that struggle with seasonal labor shortages. The locals offer transportation expenses and places to stay in return, so participants can travel to the areas with ease.
Japan Culture and Technology — Japan Culture and Technology assists artists and craftspeople in expanding their activities by providing IT support.

ANRI is a Japanese venture capital firm that mainly invests in seed and early-stage startups.

Investment focus

Software, Information Technology, Health Care
Seed, Funding Round, Series A
Japan, United States, India

Portfolio highlights

iiba — Iiba is a geospatial platform that specializes in providing location information related to child-rearing.
AiCAN — AiCAN provides system planning and development, data analysis, IT, and consulting services related to child welfare.
Asusola — Asusola engaged in the renewable energy power generation business

Incubate Fund is an independent early-stage venture capital that specializes in providing capital to technology startups at the seed stage. The firm built a portfolio of over 300 companies in Asia, taking 12 companies to public and 20 companies to M&A exit since 2010.

Investment focus

Software, Information Technology, E-Commerce
Seed, Funding Round, Series A
Japan, United States, India

Portfolio highlights

Gatebox — It is a research laboratory beyond dimension" which is researching and developing to realize "a world where you can live with a character". Therefore, Gatebox Co., Ltd. refers to itself as "Gatebox Lab" and conducts research and development beyond dimension in the area of Akihabara day and night. Dreaming that day,coming to meet beyond dimension.
NABLA Mobility — Solving the complexities involved in the "Operation of Fleets" of Mobility and support its evolution and decarbonization
Mjolnir Spaceworks — Mjolnir Spaceworks desings and manufactures state-of-the-art novel space rockets with efficient engines as well as other space equipments.

Chiba Dojo is an entrepreneurial community that supports startup companies in various stages from seed to pre-IPO.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Content, E-Commerce
Seed, Series A, Funding Round
Japan, Singapore, United States

Portfolio highlights

Manabie — Manabie is an Education Technology start-up company on a mission to provide a new style of online & offline merged learning around the world. We provide students with everything they need for efficient learning; high-quality learning materials, great learning environments, personal coaches and more! We believe that our new method of learning,integrating online and offline will dramatically innovate the way students learn.
Zaimo.ai — Zaimo's AI-driven SaaS budget planning and management software sounds like AI integration can bring significant advantages in automating tasks like tracking expenses, forecasting future spending patterns, and offering personalized budgeting suggestions.
MOSH Japan — MOSH is a web page creation services for individual business owners.

SBI Investment supports the business development and growth of private venture companies through fund investment. It manages and manages venture capital funds under the management philosophy of becoming a leading company responsible for the creation and development of core industries in the 21st century as a "new industry creator".SBIInvestment has invested in a total of 986 companies in the past, of which 169 (17.1% of investment companies) have exited through IPO or M & A.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Software, Financial Services
Series B, Series A, Funding Round
Japan, South Korea, United States

Portfolio highlights

Zolve — Best neo bank in India offering international banking & financial services online. Apply for a US bank account, credit card & student education loan with Zolve!
Zerodoor HD — Zerodoor HD specializes in digital transformation in constructing industry.
TOKYO GameFi — TOKYO GameFi is a Web3 firm formed by a management team of developers and engineers with previous experience at CyberAgent.

Growth Capital and Venture Debt team providing highly customized equity and debt solutions to help take leading technology companies to the next level.

Investment focus

Software, Internet, Analytics
Funding Round, Series A, Series C
United States, Japan

Portfolio highlights

NetBase Solutions — Empower your business with Quid's Generative AI platform to gain a holistic view of customer context. See data through the lens of the future. AI-powered consumer and market intelligence.
Invincea — Invincea is the leader in advanced endpoint threat protection, protecting more than 25,000 customers and 3 million active users.The company provides the most comprehensive solution to contain, identify, and control the advanced attacks that evade legacy security controls. Invincea protects enterprises against targeted threats, includingspear-phishing and Web drive-by attacks that exploit Java, Flash, and other applications. Combining the visibility and control of an endpoint solution with the intelligence of cloud analysis, Invincea offers the only market-deployed solution that defends against 0-day exploits, file-less malware, and previously unknown malware.The company has been in market with its award-winning technology since 2009. In 2011, Invincea was recognized as "Most Innovative Company of the Year" at RSA Conference, and since then the company has won numerous awards for its technology and business.Invincea maintains an OEM agreement with Dell to ship a customized version of Invincea's award-winning endpoint security solution, under the Dell Data Protection | Protected Workspace brand. This offering ships on Dell's entire line of commercial PCs and tablets, comprising 20 million devices per year.The company, which was founded by Dr. Anup Ghosh to address the rapidly increasing security threat from nation states, cyber criminals, and rogue actors, has commercialized technology originally built under DARPA funding. The company is venture capital-backed and based in Fairfax, VA. For more information, visit https://www.invincea.com.
Space Market — Space Market is a service that can easily lend and borrow from conference rooms to uninhabited islands.

Based in Tokyo, Adways is a mobile marketing solution provider mostly known for its Asia’s largest mobile CPI adnetwork “AppDriver” and mobile app measurement & tracking tool “PartyTrack” used by great number of major app developers around the world. Since 2004 when it opened the first overseas office in China, Adways has been aggressivelyexpanding its mobile app distribution network in Asian markets. Now with 1,000 employees in 11 countries (Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and the USA), Adways supports app developers worldwide to maximize their user acquisition and monetization and furthermore thrives to provide new value to the market. Haruhisa Okamura is Founder and CEO of Adways who has grown Adways from a small startup to an international corporation with over a thousand employees around the world. In 2006, Adways went public and Okamura was one of the youngest entrepreneurs to list a company in Japan at that time.You can read his story here: "How a high school dropout became a multi-millionaire entrepreneur" http://www.techinasia.com/high-school-dropout-multimillionaire-entrepreneur/

Investment focus

Internet, Media and Entertainment, Software
Funding Round, Seed, Series A
Japan

Portfolio highlights

Brhino — Brhino provides planning, development, and management of web services. The company's product, Monokabu, is a site where people can buy and sell sneakers and things like stock. Brhino is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
MICOLY — MICOLY is a operator of a website aimed at publishing and selling creative video lessons. The company hosts lectures that are presented by the creators of all categories who are keen on sharing their techniques and philosophies in areas of nail art, Japanese calligraphy, flower arrangement, knitting and many more, as well as interacting with theirpassionate fans, enabling users to take creative lessons and start a new hobby.
MiddleField — MiddleField is a team to make cars the best entertainment and to make the lives of everyone involved in cars into entertainment. They creates a society where a lot of people are involved as a middle point of all people's dreams. MiddleField owns and operates an e-commerce platform offering cars.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, is a Japanese bank holding / financial services company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. MUFG manages the affairs of its subsidiaries within the group and the business of the group as a whole along with all relevant ancillary business.The MUFG Group turned its eye toward the expected operatingenvironment changes over the next decade, and launched the new medium-term business plan, which outlines the strategies that will be implemented over the first three years of this period. The new plan is designed to guide us as they strive to realize their corporate vision—“Be the world's most trusted financial group.” By accelerating initiatives that span across business entities, regions, and business groups, they will work to live up to the expectations of their customers, shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders.The MUFG Group aims to achieve stable and sustainable income growth through seeking diversified revenue bases especially in customer segment both domestically and abroad, and capital efficiency by improving productivity. In addition, they will enhance shareholder value by conducting capital management flexibly taking the balance of (1) enhancement of further shareholder returns, (2) maintenance of a solid capital base and (3) strategic investments for sustainable growth, into consideration.

Investment focus

Financial Services, FinTech, Energy
Debt Financing, Funding Round, Series A
United States, Japan, Indonesia

Portfolio highlights

Anthropic — An AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
IndiaMART InterMESH — IndiaMART InterMESH is an online B2B marketplace, connecting buyers with suppliers across various industries.
Reliance Industries — Reliance Industries Limited is committed to innovation-led, exponential growth in the areas of hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail and telecommunications.

STRIVE focuses on investing in early-stage (Seed to Series A) internet and mobile companies. It seeks out companies in Japan, Southeast Asia, and India with top-notch management teams and strong market potential. It is not tied to strategic investments for GREE Inc. and leverages its pan-Asia expertise for guiding its portfolio in an engaged,hands-on role.

Investment focus

Software, Internet, E-Commerce
Seed, Series A, Funding Round
Japan, India, Indonesia

Portfolio highlights

Asuene — Asuene involves in clean power retail business, retail SaaS business, etc.
YOUTRUST — YOUTRUST is a startup to operate YOUTRUST a referral recruitment platform for side-job change.
Testsigma — Powerful cloud-based test automation platform that lets you automate tests for web, mobile, desktop apps, and APIs in minutes. Sign up now!

An investment that restructures the value and quality.Supplying big capital is not an essential value of our firm.We have a strong attitude to input and drive critical thinking behind a new startup.After the problem is clarified and solution become established in the world,people could not imagine the society without that solution.An investment that innovates this world.We will become a real partner to execute the strategy together.INVENTION OF THE ESSENCE ----we will keep on doing it.

Investment focus

Financial Services, FinTech, Finance
Seed, Series A, Series B
Japan, United States, India

Portfolio highlights

10x — 10x provides One-stop service from meal planning to grocery shopping.
RightTouch — RightTouch is a media company that offers customer support with KARTE RightSupport, and media CS Mag for tailored solutions and insights.
Zolve — Best neo bank in India offering international banking & financial services online. Apply for a US bank account, credit card & student education loan with Zolve!

Takaya Shinozuka is the President, CEO, and Founder at Reiwa Travel.

Investment focus

Internet, Local, Advertising
Seed, Angel, Series A
Japan

Portfolio highlights

Now Do — Now Do provides online growth revolution platform.
KAUCHE — X Asia creates enjoyable shopping experience.
Luup — Luup is an Internet Company.

Since its founding in 1973, JAFCO has always worked with leading-edge entrepreneurs. The total capital commitments of its investment funds in Japan and overseas have exceeded 1 trillion yen and the number of portfolio IPOs to date has reached over 1,000. In addition to venture investment, JAFCO also carries out buyout investment and commit to thecreations of innovative technologies and services worldwide. As entrepreneurs’ closest partner in bringing their visions to life, JAFCO provides support in areas of HR, marketing/ sales, and back-office operations, in addition to providing financing.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Software, Artificial Intelligence
Series A, Funding Round, Series B
Japan, United States, Israel

Portfolio highlights

Sanu — SANU is a subscription service that offers a home in nature.
Pocket Sign — Pocket Sign develops digital platforms that store e-signatures and other authentication details for it's users privacy and security.
Tech Doctor — Tech Doctor is a health monitoring service which provides analysis and insights for self care reducing the need for health care workers.

Mizuho is the venture capital firm affiliated to Mizuho Bank, the second-largest Japanese bank in terms of assets. The firm has headquarters in Tokyo.The firm has ¥49.6 billion JPY under management, focusing on information technology and biotechnology investments. Over 600 Mizuho companies have gone public. According to Nikkei, Mizuho is thefifth-largest venture capital firm in Japan.Mizuho Capital was formed in 2002 by the merger of Fujigin Capital, Tokyo Venture Capital and IBJ Investment. Three firms were subsidiaries of Fuji Bank, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and the Industrial Bank of Japan respectively.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Software, Internet
Funding Round, Series A, Series B
Japan, United States, China

Portfolio highlights

Quemix — Quemix is an IT company specialized in providing quantum computing solutions.
Plainer — Plainer is an IT company that provides software development, data management, and SaaS solutions.
Unito — Unito offers people a friction-free lifestyle by pursuing optimization of living.

OPT Ventures is an investment and incubation firm that offers startups with venture capital, investments, IPO advice, management information services, and more. The company was established on February 27, 2015, and operates as an investment subsidiary of Opt Holding Corporation, an e-marketing company based in Tokyo, Japan.

Investment focus

Software, E-Commerce, Task Management
Funding Round, Series A, Seed
Japan, United States, India

Portfolio highlights

CirclePe — Backed by India's Top Investors, connect us with your new Landlord & get a Zero Deposit move-in for the 1st time ever.
Receptionist — Delighted develops an application for reception services. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Tokyo, Japan.
Zeelab Pharmacy — Zeelab Pharmacy brings to you a high quality affordable generic medicines delivered to your doorstep with ecommerce & network of over 200+ stores in India.

Recruit Strategic Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in innovative startups from all around the world. It is a corporate venture capital arm of Recruit Holdings that seeks to invest in education and financial technology, digital healthcare, and infrastructure sectors. It was established in 2008 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

Investment focus

E-Commerce, Software, Financial Services
Series A, Seed, Series B
United States, Japan, India

Portfolio highlights

Blacklane — Blacklane is the global chauffeur service that offers safety, sustainability, and stress-free travel. Since 2017, the company has been carbon-neutral, combining a five-star guest experience with care for the planet. The customers can book their travels using Blacklane’s mobile app or website.Blacklane was co-founded by Jens Wohltorf and FrankSteuer and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
Steady — Home Page Steady Your Income Home Page Steady Your Income Home Page Steady Your Income
ZenBusiness — Start a new business today for $0 or grow your existing business with the ZenBusiness platform. Get to your first dollar faster without the stress.

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