Japanese AI company SakanaAI recently received US$127 million in financing, with a valuation of US$1.1 billion, quickly becoming the fastest growing AI unicorn in Japan. The company, led by David Ha and Llion Jones, is committed to developing "sovereign artificial intelligence" based on natural principles, aiming to allow each country to have autonomous AI capabilities, which is not only about technology, but also about culture and national security. SakanaAI's innovative technology "evolutionary model merging" and the strong support of the Japanese government give it a favorable position in the global AI competition.
In Japan, a revolution in artificial intelligence is quietly emerging. SakanaAI, led by David Ha and Llion Jones, two heavyweights in the AI field, has just completed a $127 million round of financing with a strong lineup of investors, including Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, and NEA. SakanaAI, founded in July 2023, has quickly become Japan's fastest-growing AI unicorn with its unique entrepreneurial philosophy and top talents, with a valuation of up to US$1.1 billion.
SakanaAI's vision is to develop artificial intelligence based on natural principles. They believe that each country should have its own intellectual production, which is what "sovereign artificial intelligence" means. This concept is not only about technology, but also about culture, social wisdom, common sense and history. As Huang Renxun said at the World Government Summit, even small countries should be committed to developing their own large language models to establish their own AI infrastructure.
SakanaAI’s team members have impressive backgrounds, including experts from top institutions such as Google Brain and Stability AI. Their technical route is also quite innovative, proposing the "evolutionary model merging" method to automatically create AI models by imitating the process of natural selection, significantly reducing the amount of manual input while maintaining high performance.
At the policy level, the Japanese government provides huge support to SakanaAI, not only providing financial support, but also providing access to supercomputers, promoting its cooperation with giants such as NTT and Sony to jointly build Japan's AI ecosystem. SakanaAI is also actively involved in government and defense projects, and its ambitions are evident.
Looking around the world, not only Japan, but also Singapore, India, the United Arab Emirates and other countries are actively investing in sovereign AI to protect local culture and national security, while occupying a favorable position in the global AI competition. This state-driven AI competition is reshaping the global technology landscape and bringing unprecedented development opportunities to related companies.
In this global AI wave, technology giants such as NVIDIA are also actively planning to promote the development of sovereign AI and gain huge benefits from it. It is predicted that the sovereign AI strategy will bring Nvidia nearly 10 billion US dollars in revenue and become its new revenue growth point.
In general, sovereign AI has become a new focus of competition among countries around the world. It is not only related to the development of technology, but also to the country’s culture, economy and security. As governments and enterprises continue to invest, we have reason to believe that sovereign AI will play an increasingly important role in the future.
The success of SakanaAI and the emphasis on sovereign AI by countries around the world indicate that the development of artificial intelligence has entered a new stage, where national strategy and technological innovation will be deeply integrated to jointly shape the future AI landscape. This will be a competition full of opportunities and challenges.