KDDI
VC Fund
Tokyo, Japan
KDDI is a VC fund in Tokyo focused on Software and Mobile. KDDI Corporation is a Japanese telecommunications operator. It was created in 2000 through a merger of DDI, KDD and IDO and now employs over 15,000 people.The company provides a broad range of services, including fixed-line phone communication, mobile phone and web services, and Internet services. It also has a ownership stake in two Japanesecable television companies, Jupiter Telecommunications (J:COM) and Japan Cablenet (JCN). KDDI's mobile phone and web arm is branded as "au". The company is the current No. 2 in Japan's mobile communications market, trailing NTT DoCoMo and ahead of SoftBank.
- Total investments:
- 92
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 32%
- Fund size:
- $187M
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries KDDI invests in
Stages KDDI invests in
Countries KDDI invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| See all 10 contacts → | |||
Round size
- Series A
- $4.1M–$209M
- Series B
- $2.8M–$41M
- Venture - Series Unknown
- $254k–$31M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 14 (15%)
- Mobile 11 (12%)
- Artificial Intelligence 10 (11%)
- Apps 9 (10%)
- Internet 9 (10%)
Stage
- Series A 17 (18%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 15 (16%)
- Series B 13 (14%)
- Funding Round 11 (12%)
- Seed 9 (10%)
Country
- Japan 56 (61%)
- United States 15 (16%)
- South Korea 4 (4%)
- Israel 2 (2%)
- China 1 (1%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Kazuhiko Chuman
General Manager
|
General Manager | Total investments: 10 | Find email | |
Eiji Toyokawa
Head of Startup Relations
|
Head of Startup Relations | Total investments: 2 | Find email | |
Ken Sobajima
Senior Director of Investments
|
Senior Director of Investments | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Makoto Takahashi
Senior Vice President
|
Senior Vice President | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
|
Mutsumi Nakata
Associate Senior Vice President
|
Associate Senior Vice President | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
| See all 10 team members → | ||||
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yuime is an HR consulting firm that offers agricultural staffing, contract farming, and recruitment services. | $5.2M / Series B / Apr 14, 2025 | ||
| RLWRLD specializes in "Physical AI" by creating robotics foundation models (RFMs) designed to enable robots to function autonomously in real-world environments. | $14.8M / Seed / Apr 14, 2025 | ||
| Yuime is an HR consulting firm that offers agricultural staffing, contract farming, and recruitment services. | $2.8M / Series B / Jan 20, 2025 | ||
| Short term (hourly & daily) storage all around urban areas, hosted by local businesses. | Corporate Round / Dec 04, 2024 | ||
| Skydio is a drone manufacturer that uses artificial intelligence to create flying drones that are used by consumers, enterprises, and government customers.It develops AI-powered drones to deliver the power and flying cameras without the complexity. The company's drones use an array of cameras and proprietary computer vision technology torecognize, avoid objects in real-time, and predict into the future to make intelligent decisions, enabling users by flying themselves through the most demanding tasks or keeping them safe from obstacles when they want to take control. The company's debut drone, the R1, could track a target and film them while avoiding obstacles without any human intervention required. Then the company released the Skydio 2 in 2019, its second drone, cutting off more than half the price while improving it its autonomous tracking and video capabilities. Its flagship product, the X2, is equipped with seven cameras, 100x zoom, night vision, and promises to turn ordinary users into expert pilots thanks to its self-piloting abilities. It is backed by top investors and strategic partners including Andreessen Horowitz, Linse Capital, Next47, IVP, Playground, NVIDIA, and UP.Partners.Abraham Bachrach, Adam Bry, and Matt Donahoe founded Klarna in Redwood City, California in 2014. | $170M / Series E / Nov 15, 2024 | ||
| Lawson, Inc. engages in the development, operation, and management of its own and franchised Lawson convenience stores primarily in Japan. | $3.5B / Post-IPO Equity / Sep 19, 2024 | ||
| DeCurret is into Cryptocurrency Business. | $44.9M / Venture - Series Unknown / Sep 12, 2024 | ||
| Sakana AI creates a new kind of foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence. | $209.3M / Series A / Sep 04, 2024 | ||
| Groq is a technology company that designs and provides specialized artificial intelligence compute solutions focused on accelerating AI inference workloads using its custom-built Language Processing Unit (LPU) hardware and associated software stack. The company’s core products include purpose-designed silicon and cloud-accessible platforms thatsupport real-time execution of large language models and other AI tasks with low latency and high throughput, enabling developers and enterprises to integrate AI services into production environments efficiently. Groq also delivers cloud-based services that allow customers to access inference capabilities via APIs compatible with popular development tools, supporting seamless integration into existing AI workflows. Its engineering efforts emphasise deterministic performance and streamlined deployment, targeting use cases where speed and cost predictability are critical. Groq engages with partners and customers across sectors that require rapid AI inferencing, and the company’s technology has attracted significant strategic interest and investment within the broader AI infrastructure ecosystem. | $640M / Series D / Aug 05, 2024 | ||
| Turing develops and manufactures fully autonomous vehicles. | $19.4M / Seed / Apr 23, 2024 | ||
| See all 92 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does KDDI invest in?
KDDI invests primarily in Software, Mobile and Artificial Intelligence startups, most often at Series A and Venture - Series Unknown stage. Most of the 92 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Japan. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is KDDI's check size?
KDDI typically joins rounds of $4.1M–$209M at Series A, $2.8M–$41M at Series B and $254k–$31M at Venture - Series Unknown. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds KDDI participates in.
How do I contact KDDI?
Public channels for KDDI include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
Who are the partners at KDDI?
The team at KDDI includes Kazuhiko Chuman (General Manager), Eiji Toyokawa (Head of Startup Relations) and Ken Sobajima (Senior Director of Investments), among 10 team members tracked by Shizune. The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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