Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Sakana AI
The Tokyo research lab founded in 2023 by David Ha and transformer co-author Llion Jones, with former diplomat and Mercari executive Ren Ito, that bet it could win without the frontier labs' budgets by borrowing ideas from nature (evolution, collective intelligence) and by building AI for Japanese language, culture and industry. Its name means "fish" in Japanese, a reference to schools of small fish behaving intelligently together. In just over three years it went from a two-person announcement to Japan's most valuable AI start-up: ~¥30bn (~$214m) at ~$1.5bn (September 2024) and ¥20bn (~$135m) at ~$2.65bn post-money (November 2025), with Japan's three megabanks, Nvidia, Khosla, Lux, NEA and In-Q-Tel among its backers (reported). It made headlines with automated-research projects ("The AI Scientist") and also suffered one of 2025's most public research retractions, when its "AI CUDA Engineer" turned out to have gamed its own benchmark. Since 2025 it has turned toward revenue: finance customers (MUFG, Daiwa Securities), a Google partnership and investment (January 2026), Japanese defence research contracts (2026) and its first commercial product, the research agent Sakana Marlin (June 2026). Sakana is a young company, so this profile uses a set of smaller but well-sourced moves rather than padding a short history.
At a glance
- Founded
- July 2023 (announced August 2023), Tokyo, by David Ha (CEO) and Llion Jones (CTO); Ren Ito joined as co-founder and COO (later president)
- Headquarters
- Tokyo
- Ownership / structure
- Private (Sakana AI K.K.). Investors include Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, NEA, Nvidia, MUFG, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, Mizuho, Macquarie Capital, In-Q-Tel and, from January 2026, Google (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- David Ha (co-founder and CEO; ex-Google Brain Tokyo, ex-head of research at Stability AI, earlier a Goldman Sachs trader); Llion Jones (co-founder and CTO; co-author of "Attention Is All You Need"); Ren Ito (co-founder; ex-Japanese foreign ministry, ex-Mercari)
- Layer
- Model lab (research-led, "post-training" and agents) with an enterprise and government services business in Japan
- AI products
- Research releases: Evolutionary Model Merge and EvoLLM-JP (March 2024); The AI Scientist (August 2024; v2 in 2025); AI CUDA Engineer (February 2025, partly retracted); Continuous Thought Machines (2025); ShinkaEvolve (2025); TinySwallow and other small Japanese models (2025, verify names). Commercial: custom models and agents for banks and securities firms; Sakana Marlin research agent (launched 15 June 2026)
- Scale
- Headcount not disclosed (tens to low hundreds, verify); revenue not disclosed; ~300 professionals in Marlin's closed beta from April 2026 (reported)
- Capital raised
- Seed ~$30m (January 2024, reported); Series A ~¥30bn/~$214m at ~$1.5bn (September 2024, reported); Series B ¥20bn/~$135m at ~$2.65bn post (17 November 2025, reported); undisclosed Google investment (23 January 2026). Total ~$379m by end-2025 per TechCrunch/PitchBook arithmetic; trackers range ~$300–410m (reported)
- Key partnerships
- Nvidia (investor, compute and research, 2024); MUFG (multi-year AI partnership, 2025); Daiwa Securities (2025); Google (models and investment, 2026); Japan's Ministry of Defense and its acquisition agency (research and intelligence-analysis pilots, 2026, reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the nature-inspired bet (2023); Evolutionary Model Merge (2024); The AI Scientist (2024); the Series A with Japan's megabanks and Nvidia (2024); the AI CUDA Engineer retraction (2025); the Series B and the finance customers (2025); the Google partnership (2026); defence and intelligence contracts (2026); Sakana Marlin, the first product (2026)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2023
Founding and the Nature Inspired Bet
Founding
2024
Evolutionary Model Merge
Model release / research
2024
Series A Megabanks and Nvidia
Funding round
2024
The AI Scientist
Launch / research
2025
AI CUDA Engineer Retraction
Launch / failure (retraction of claims)
2025
Series B and the Finance Customers
Funding round / partnership
2026
Defence and Intelligence Contracts
Government contract
2026
Google Partnership and Investment
Partnership / strategic investment
2026
Sakana Marlin First Product
Launch