Top 15 Social VC (Venture Capital) Funds in Japan in January 2025

Investor	Social Japan investments
Nissay Capital	2
Venture Labo Investment	1
Mizuho Capital	1
Global Brain Corporation	1
KDDI Open Innovation Fund	1
Kodansha	1
aucfan Co.,Ltd.	1
Maezawa Fund	1
Waseda University	1
Recruit Strategic Partners	1
Makuake	1
Sansei Capital Investment	1
WERU Investment	1
ANRI	1
Archetype Ventures	1

Nissay Capital is a venture capital Company specializing in seed, start-up, growth capital, middle stage, and later stage investment.

Investment focus

Health Care, Internet, Medical
Funding Round, Seed, Series A
Japan, United States, Ethiopia

Portfolio highlights

Castee — Castee provides social collaboration services and also helps with a tool for job requests and overseas projects for creators.
HQ — HQ offers next-generation employee benefits platform.
Qlay — Qlay is an AI-automated global engineer hiring platform

Venture Labo Investment is venture capital firm that provides financial supports to invested companies at each growth stage.

Investment focus

Financial Services, Internet, Information Technology
Funding Round, Series B, Seed
Japan, Indonesia, South Korea

Portfolio highlights

Castee — Castee provides social collaboration services and also helps with a tool for job requests and overseas projects for creators.
SImount — SImount is a database management system platform that connects all data such as Excel, CSV, PDF. Moreover, It can utilize all the data related to business, leading to higher business efficiency and higher sales.
Batton — Batton is a product-developing company that sells AI-enabled RPA buttons and AI formats that allow papers to be automatically formatted.

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

Precal — Precal is an information technology company that develops applications that are common with pharmacies, pharmacists, and dispensing clerks.
Any — any. develops and offers knowledge sharing tool Qast.
Grand Central — Grand Central is a consulting company specializing in the sales field.

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

Lazuli — Lazuli is a SaaS platform that enables companies to utilize data for analysis, search, recommendation, marketing & supply chain management.
HQ — HQ offers next-generation employee benefits platform.
Smart Education — Smart Education, Ltd. (located in Tokyo, Japan, President Daigo Ikeya) launched it’s kid’s music app “Rhythm Book” for smartphones and tablets. It’s in the App Store as an universal app for iPhone, iPad and iTouch. With Rhythm book, kids can learn and feel the rhythm by tapping instruments along with their favorite songs. There are more than 100kid’s songs from TV, cartoons, to choose from and nursery rhymes in English and in Japanese. Stimulate the young mind with genuine and real studio recorded music and sounds. This app is designed to co-play between parents and child. You can purchase more songs via internet and the songs you’ve purchased can be co-owned by the same Apple ID through iCloud.

KDDI Open Innovation Fund is a corporate venture capital fund that will support promising startup companies. Total size of the fund is JPY10 billion. This is the first corporate venture capital fund established by KDDI. The fund will be managed by Global Brain Corporation (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO, Yasuhiko Yurimoto),which has a strong track record in the venture capital business. By combining KDDI’s know-how and assets with Global Brain’s investment and management support capabilities, we will work together to accelerate cooperative activities with promising startup companies. Through this fund, as well as "KDDI ∞ Labo," a startup incubation program currently inviting a second round of applications, we will continue to support the growth of the next startup companies.

Investment focus

Software, Mobile, Internet
Funding Round, Series B, Series A
Japan, United States, Germany

Portfolio highlights

DataMesh — DataMesh empowers conventional enterprises to adopt intelligent design, accelerate service deployment, and execute cost-effective planning processes by leveraging Digital Twin and Mixed Reality technologies.
Thinkr — THINKR provides advertising, video production, content, UX design, and animation services.
Turing — Turing develops and manufactures fully autonomous vehicles.

Kodansha is the largest publisher in Japan and produces the manga magazines Nakayoshi, Afternoon, Evening, and Weekly Shonen Magazine, as well as more literary magazines such as Gunzō, Shūkan Gendai, and the Japanese dictionary Nihongo Daijiten. The company has its headquarters in Bunkyō, Tokyo. The Noma family—relatives of the founder—continues toown KodanshaSource: [Wikipedia] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodansha)

Investment focus

Software, Media and Entertainment, News
Corporate Round, Funding Round, Seed
Japan, Indonesia, United States

Portfolio highlights

MyAnimeList — Welcome to MyAnimeList, the world's most active online anime and manga community and database. Join the online community, create your anime and manga list, read reviews, explore the forums, follow news, and so much more!
SPORTS BULL — SPORTS BULL is an Internet sports media management company.
Animoca Brands KK — Animoca Brands KK supports the global strategy of Web3.0 for Japanese intellectual property and content (IP) holders such as major publishers, brands, education, sports organizations, athletes, artists, and game companies. rice field. Animoca Brands KK builds and provides a platform that utilizes blockchain technology and provides a mechanism forIP / IP holders to have their own ecosystem in Web3.0 and issue NFTs and tokens within it.

Aucfan is the only company in Japan that provides all the eCommerce price data across the big three market, America, China and Japan. The data Aucfan aggregates has reached more than 800millions with last 8 years coverage and Aucfan provides these data through its website Aucfan.com. (www.aucfan.com).The data Aucfan provides both to theconsumers and the retailers include the the price across the major global EC and Auction sites such as Rakuten, the No1 shopping site in Japan, Yahoo! Auction, the No1 Auction site in Japan, and Amazon Japan as well as eBay.com, the No1 EC site in US, and Taobao, the No1 Auction site in China.By visiting the Aucfan.com, buyers and sellers can easily find the price and the value of the product globally.Aucfan currently focuses on the consumer buesinss but Aucfan's next strategy is to expand its business to the BtoB by providing the price data to the EC and retail markets and helping them make the critical judgement for the price setting and purchsing just like the Bloomberg providing the financial informationto the financial brokers and helping them make the business judgement.Aucfan's next ambition is to expand its business globally and as the part of that strategy, Aucfan has already launched the Chinese website in JULY/2010 and plans to open the US site in SEP/2010.

Investment focus

E-Commerce, Marketing, Internet
Funding Round, Series A, Corporate Round
Japan, Indonesia, France

Portfolio highlights

Ginkan — GINKAN is the managing company of SynchroLife, the world's first restaurant recommendation platform where users and can earn cryptocurrency token rewards for dining out and posting restaurant reviews. GINKAN was selected for Plug and Play Japan Batch 1 in the fintech category and we won for best domestic fintech company and won the audienceaward at the Plug and Play Japan Batch 1 EXPO (Demo Day) in September 2018.GINKAN was also selected for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s MUFG Digital Accelerator’s Batch 4 and won the Grand Prix, Audience Award, and AWS Award in a triple win on their demo day on July 26, 2019.
Yuwaeru — Yuwaeru is a Direct-to-Consumer company
nextProtein — nextProtein is developing a large scale and sustainable insect based source of protein. The bioconversion of fly larvae fed with organic waste generates valuable feed components for fish, livestock and pets.

The Maezawa Fund is a joint-stock company that invests in entrepreneurs and organizations whose business themes are “solving social issues” and “pursuing hobbies,” and is based on Yusaku Maezawa’s personal assets. It was established for the purpose of investing 100 million yen.

Investment focus

Laser, Beauty, Social
Seed, Funding Round
Japan, United States

Portfolio highlights

YUKASHIKADO — Yukasikado is developing a business on the axis of nutrition that supports the health of the body.
ARIGATO BANK — Arigato Bank offers financial services, with a focus on solving social issues.
Blue Laser Fusion — Blue Laser Fusion is a commercial fusion company. Blue Laser Fusion is a laser startup to commercialize laser fusion by inventing its own laser and fusion reactor.

Waseda University is a Tokyo-based private university that offers various degree programs. As the second private university to be founded in Japan, Waseda University is considered to be one of Japan's most prestigious universities, consistently ranking amongst the top universities in Japanese university rankings. The University has manynotable alumni in Japan, with seven Prime Ministers of Japan and many CEOs, including Tadashi Yanai, the CEO of UNIQLO and wealthiest man in Japan.Waseda University's main campus is located in the Nishi-Waseda district of Shinjuku. Apart from the main campus in Shinjuku, It has other campuses around the country, including Toyama Campus and Nishi-Waseda Campus in Shinjuku; Nihonbashi Campus in Chuo-ku; Higashifushimi Campus in Nishitokyo; Tokorozawa Campus in Tokorozawa; Honjo Campus in Honjo, Saitama; and Kitakyushu Campus in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka.The university has more than fifty thousand students and staff, comprising 13 undergraduate schools, 23 graduate schools, and other research and affiliated institutes, and is one of the 13 universities in the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's ""Global 30"" Project. It has partnerships with more than 600 universities and tertiary institutions, with many international students studying abroad at Waseda University each year.Established in 1882 as the Tōkyō College by Okuma Shigenobu, the school was renamed Waseda University in 1902 after the founder's hometown village.

Investment focus

Social, FinTech, Big Data
Series A, Seed, Series B
Japan

Portfolio highlights

Zuva KK — Zuva KK provides an information platform dedicated to overseas startups based on the project.
ZAISAN Net — ZAISAN Net is the well-known leading AI-Fintech startup in Japan, specializing in handling time-series of data like stock price movements. Institutional investors benefit from ZAISAN Net’s AI forecast signals and alerts while consumers have access to Kabuto-yohou, the stock forecast from wall-street in Japan, which is already popular and has beenintroduced on World Business Satellite, TV program similar to CNN.
SymBio Pharmaceuticals — SymBio Pharmaceuticals Limited operates as a biopharmaceutical company. It offers Symbenda medicine for treating low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and chronic lymphatic leukemia in Singapore. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

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.

Makuake is a operation of various support services centered on the cloud funding platform "Makuake".It is a product production support project utilizing R & D technology.

Investment focus

E-Commerce, Manufacturing, Food and Beverage
Product Crowdfunding, Equity Crowdfunding, Seed
Japan, United States

Portfolio highlights

Now Do — Now Do provides online growth revolution platform.
Wakaze — Wakaze is a Japanese sake brewing startup.
Minimal - Bean to Bar Chocolate — Minimal - Bean to Bar Chocolate is a Chocolate startup

Sansei Capital provides portfolio management, corporate management support, and financing services.

Investment focus

Content, Medical, Task Management
Funding Round, Series A, Series B
Japan, China, Belgium

Portfolio highlights

RABO — RABO is a Cat-Tech Company that "watches cat life with technology.
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.
Asoview — ASOVIEW Inc. is an online booking website that provides booking services for weekend leisure activities like skydiving and rafting. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Shibuya, Kanagawa.

As a pioneer and innovator in venture capital in Japan for the past 2 decades, we are deeply engaged in developing and supporting entrepreneurs and start-ups by leveraging our strategic position as a conduit between government, business and academia.“WERU” is the first research unit in the field of entrepreneurship in Japan established byprofessors at the graduate school, Waseda University in 1993.　“WERU Investment” is the first venture capital closely associated with university research labs, centers and institutes in japan. WERU Investment provides financial services for institutional investors (e.g. Pension funds and Endowments) as a Japanese discretionary investment manager (DIM) by fully taking advantage of these research resources, accumulated know-how and strong network.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Consulting, Software
Seed, Funding Round, Series A
Japan, United States

Portfolio highlights

Synfini — The Agile Drug Discovery Company.
Novity — Novity offers predictive maintenance, exceptional accuracy, and cold-start prognostics solutions for the chemical, oil, and gas industries.
Cinderelax — Cinderelax is a makeup video app through which individuals can learn makeup.

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

Investment focus

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

Portfolio highlights

Taian — Taian, which specializes in bridal industry services and software. They also provide ''Concept Marry,'' which allows couples to design invites and seating charts that match their wedding theme, as well as display guest information on Oiwaii.
ARCH — ARCH provides research, development, operation, and support systems for gynecology and fertility treatment solutions
Upsider — - Vue - Nuxt.js - TypeScript - SCSS

Archetype Ventures is a venture capital firm specializing in B2B Tech seed and early stage venture investments.

Investment focus

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

Portfolio highlights

Any — any. develops and offers knowledge sharing tool Qast.
YourTrade — ONE KEY TO GLOBAL TRADE
Hubble — Cloud-based software specialized for contracts and other legal documents