Top 10 Sporting Goods VC Funds &amp; Investors in Japan (September 2026)

Ricoh provides innovative products and services, and it is expanding its business in three customer segments: office, printing, and others.The company provides image equipment such as MFPs and printers for offices and visual communication products that support new work styles. In addition, the company solves problems for office customers throughtotal solutions that combine IT environment construction, network environment operation support, and user support.

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Consulting, Artificial Intelligence
Stage:Seed, Series C, Series A
Geography: Japan

Investor stats

Total investments: 6
Round size: Series C $4.9M–$27M
Lead/follow: 33% lead, 67% follow

Portfolio highlights

ASUENE — Asuene involves in clean power retail business, retail SaaS business, etc.
Flucle — Flucle provides company rule building and risk mitigation, cloud advisor, human resource development, training & labor management services.
Log build — Log build offers a new form of on-site management that enables productivity improvement and real-time visualization and sharing of on-site information through on-site management robots and VR software. The company provides AI development, VR development, construction site construction management robot, cloud site management, and construction siteplatform.

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

Investment focus

Industry: Content, Marketing, Medical
Stage:Venture - Series Unknown, Series A
Geography: Japan, China, Belgium

Investor stats

Total investments: 50
Round size: Series A $1.1M–$6.9M; Venture - Series Unknown $477k–$2.8M
Lead/follow: 6% lead, 94% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $21M in 2015

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 is an online booking website that provides booking services for tour, activities and attractions/experiences.

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Kaga Electronics is a Japan based company engages in the sales of electronic components, electronic devices and other. It operates through following segments: Electronic Components, Information Equipment, Software and Other. The firm generates majority revenue from the Electronic Components.

Investment focus

Industry: Education, Software, Consulting
Stage:Venture - Series Unknown, Corporate Round, Series A
Geography: Japan, Taiwan

Investor stats

Total investments: 27
Round size: Series A $2.4M–$6.6M; Corporate Round $445k–$2.8M; Venture - Series Unknown $1.2M–$14M
Lead/follow: 41% lead, 59% follow

Portfolio highlights

DriveX — DriveX is a consulting firm that helps in creating new businesses using AI solutionst.
Linkage — Linkage is a Online health support business and Online specific health guidance.
CI Partners — CI Partners mission is to "eliminate the word 'disability' from this country," and with the message "Everyone is a star."

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Japanese hearing aid manufacturer

Investment focus

Industry: Sports, Wearables, Sporting Goods
Stage:Series A
Geography: Japan

Investor stats

Total investments: 2
Lead/follow: 0% lead, 100% follow

Portfolio highlights

Bonx — GO MAKE NOISE

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Mitsubishi UFJ Capital is a venture capital firm focusing on life science, ICT, and high technology investments.

Investment focus

Industry: Information Technology, Software, Health Care
Stage:Series A, Series B
Geography: Japan, United States, Singapore

Investor stats

Total investments: 656
Round size: Series A $1.2M–$29M; Series B $3.5M–$68M
Lead/follow: 9% lead, 91% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $94M in 2020

Portfolio highlights

ADiXi — Adixi is a tech-driven business that supports the idea that people and technology may work together. It strives to open doors by utilizing cutting-edge technology, such as artificial intelligence, to promote long-term, sustainable corporate and societal progress.
Caguuu — Caguuu offers high-quality designer furniture at affordable prices, through e-commerce, eliminating middlemen and store operating costs.
Link Therapeutics — Link Therapeutics specializes in developing therapeutic methods for targeting autoantibodies and identifying pathogenic autoantibodies.

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Edge Lab provides various support services for IP business.

Investment focus

Industry: Pet, Apps, Events
Stage:Seed, Series A, Venture - Series Unknown
Geography: Japan

Investor stats

Total investments: 3
Lead/follow: 0% lead, 100% follow

Portfolio highlights

Bonx — GO MAKE NOISE
Ranimaru — Ranimaru is pet service providing company that offers pet sitting, care of your pet dog in events, professional course about pet sitting.
Crowd Credit — Crowdcredit is cross-border marketplace lending platform operator.We provide risk capital to individuals and SMEs in financial deficit countries while we offer attractive lending opportunities to investors in financial surplus countries.Currently, we are providing Japanese personal and SMEs investors with opportunities to lend toindividuals and SMEs in Peru, Cameroon, Estonia, Finland, Spain and in Italy.In 2016, Crowdcredit is aiming to start raising funds and also to start lending in Asian region outside of Japan.

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Keio Innovation Initiative (KII) is a venture capital established by Keio University. In order to make more effective use of the research results of Keio University, we aim to contribute to the development of society by creating investment for venture companies that utilize research results and creating new industries.The key to thinking aboutJapan's future growth strategy is to utilize advanced research results of the university. In addition to GDP, in addition to GDP, Japan is the world's third largest R & D exporter in R & D expenses, but as the low growth rate shows, it has a problem in investment efficiency in research and development. There are also reports on the entrepreneurial spirit that is indispensable for creating new industries, with the lowest entrepreneurial activity rate among developed countries.

Investment focus

Industry: Health Care, Medical, Biotechnology
Stage:Series A, Seed, Venture - Series Unknown
Geography: Japan, United Kingdom

Investor stats

Total investments: 91
Round size: Seed $826k–$14M; Series A $2.2M–$41M; Venture - Series Unknown $2M–$12M
Lead/follow: 30% lead, 70% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $94M in 2020

Portfolio highlights

ElleThermo — elleThermo aims to implement Semiconductor-Sensitised Thermal Cells (STCs), an energy conversion technology that can generate electricity from unused waste heat above room temperature.
Starlight Engine — Starlight Engine develops and commercializes fusion energy power plant technologies.
Neusignal Therapeutics — Neusignal Therapeutics is a medical company that develops therapeutic medicines for dementia and psychiatric illnesses.

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Innovation Engine has been is promoting investment to create and grow promising business areas created from technology.

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence
Stage:Venture - Series Unknown, Series A
Geography: Japan, Spain

Investor stats

Total investments: 38
Round size: Series A $663k–$4.7M; Venture - Series Unknown $1.5M–$13M
Lead/follow: 21% lead, 79% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $12M in 2019

Portfolio highlights

CoA Nexus — CoA Nexus develops and operates a skillshare matching platform for human resource research and development.
bestat — bestat is a developer of platforms for 3D data creation, management, and utilization using AI and offers digital twins services.
Openverse Global — Openverse operates as a Layer 0 hub, providing a foundational framework for decentralized applications and services.

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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

Industry: Content, Internet, Software
Stage:Venture - Series Unknown, Seed
Geography: Japan

Investor stats

Total investments: 33
Round size: Seed $2M–$39M; Venture - Series Unknown $944k–$9.1M
Lead/follow: 3% lead, 97% follow

Portfolio highlights

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.
Rentio — Rentio is a site that can be used anytime without buying 1,000 kinds of cameras and the latest home appliances.
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.

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