Intel: from Japanese sources

The internal-audit role asks for 3+ years of audit, internal-control and risk experience, with Japanese-language interviews. An internal-audit function is a standard step in preparing for a Japanese IPO. Separate defence roles (Forward Deployed Engineer, System Infrastructure Architect) on Workable may require Japanese nationality and security clearance.

The posting itself says Mujin is 'IPO準備中' (preparing for IPO), alongside a Group Controller role covering US, EU and China subsidiaries. Together they are a direct IPO-prep signal for a ¥150B+ company that has avoided giving a listing timeline.

T2's FY3/2026 net loss of ¥4.53B is about 4x the FY3/2024 figure (¥1.12B), with ¥5.5B of new equity bringing net assets to ¥5.14B. Registry-implied share prices rose from ¥3,978 (Feb 2024) to ¥5,000 and ¥6,000 (Aug and Oct 2025). Rising burn and up-rounds together mean investors are still paying up for the 2027 Level-4 trunk-route launch.

Registry filings show 11 issues of C and D preferred shares from Dec 2022 to Mar 2026, all at ¥21,406 a share (implied ≈¥22B valuation). Listed diagnostics firm Tauns took ¥2B. Shareholders' equity was slightly negative at FY10/2024 and FY10/2025, and the latest loss was ¥1.99B. A three-year flat round led by a strategic investor, while no revenue is disclosed, says a lot.

After passing another stage gate, MEXT raised Interstellar's maximum SBIR Phase 3 grant for the ZERO rocket to ¥19.37B, with the phase running to end-March 2028. Government money now rivals the ¥20.1B Series F, so ZERO's timeline depends on milestones in Tokyo as much as on VCs.

Pale Blue had booked a 2027 AxelLiner Laboratory slot to fly its fast-start Hall thruster. Listed Axelspace now discloses that Pale Blue sent written notice to cancel, citing technical issues with the Axelspace satellite. This pushes back Pale Blue's flight heritage, which it needs to sell thrusters, and it must find another ride. The news surfaced only through a partner's TSE filing.

The Fukuoka care-tech company's balance sheet has shrunk to ¥74M in assets after a ¥409M loss, and insured headcount is down to 23. That points to a sharp restructuring or a near-cash-out position at FY-end. The retained deficit equals one year's loss, so a capital reduction absorbed earlier losses.

Diamond confirms CADDi has exited its original procurement-marketplace (受発注) business to focus on the manufacturing AI data platform, and that CEO Yushiro Kato now runs the company from the US. The headline says the company withdrew its public ARR target. The ¥182B Series D valuation rests on the SaaS pivot, not the old revenue base.

The logistics-SaaS company (MOVO) is near break-even, with an annual loss of only ¥282M against a ¥3.89B accumulated deficit. Its assets grew 6% to ¥3.42B. Japan's 2024–26 logistics regulations (the mandatory CLO rule) appear to be turning into profitable demand, which makes an IPO credible.

The chat-commerce and AI-agent company unveiled and began selling a humanoid robot, D1, on 5 Aug 2026, a striking pivot into hardware. Shimizu frames it as his lifelong goal to 'build Doraemon'. Investors should ask how a company with ¥0.48B losses funds robot development.

The Tokyo government licence, dated 3 Aug 2026, lets Craif act as its own marketing authorisation holder for high-risk device software. It is a prerequisite for filing its urine-miRNA pancreatic-cancer AI with PMDA (target 2026 filing, 2027 approval), which would turn a self-pay test into a regulated device.

A consortium led by spin-off Starlight Engine was conditionally selected to demonstrate power generation with a high-temperature-superconducting tokamak. This is METI's first fusion power-demo subsidy, and it effectively names Starlight Engine as a national champion candidate. Final award terms are still pending.

Bitkey's electronic notices show net losses of ¥3.3B, ¥3.06B and ¥1.65B for FY2023–25 and an accumulated deficit of ¥21.25B. Net assets of only ¥1.94B are being refilled by JIC VGI money. The loss is halving, but the deficit explains why a government-linked fund, rather than an IPO, is supplying growth capital.

Two years after founding, ex-Bengo4.com executive Daichi Tachibana states an IPO path and a ¥100B revenue target for FY2031, among the most aggressive public plans in Japanese HR-tech. The company cites more than 3,000 client organisations, including AEON, 7-Eleven Japan and local governments, for its AI interview and role-play tools.

Alongside Kyoto Fusioneering's Starlight Engine consortium, Helical Fusion is one of the conditional picks for METI's milestone-based support toward 2030s power demonstration. The state is backing both tokamak and helical designs. Award amounts are not yet public.

In its first results as a listed company Mirrativ swung to a ¥349M operating profit from a ¥245M loss. The swing came mostly from lower payment fees and higher spend per loyal user (ARPLU ¥58,716), with modest user growth. Guidance of ¥1.11B operating profit on ¥8.4B revenue for 2026 would make it among the more profitable consumer-app IPOs of the cohort.

This is the second defence contract, signed on 29 Jul 2026 under the MoD's startup technology-proposal scheme. The first was a command-and-control (C2) research contract. This one targets strategic intelligence analysis for the Defense Intelligence Headquarters (情報本部), which shows Sakana moving from battlefield C2 work up to analysis that supports national-level policy decisions. A proper government revenue line is forming.

Registry filings show convertible notes issued in Sep–Oct 2025 converted into E1 shares at ¥410. The D/E rounds were priced at ¥810, a level unchanged since 2019. That implies a fully diluted value of about ¥27.1B, around 46% below the Series E level, while FY3/2026 still lost ¥1.45B. An undisclosed down round in effect.

The LOVOT maker lost ¥2.56B, its accumulated deficit reached ¥4.32B, and total assets fell 43% to ¥3.63B, with 321 people on social insurance rolls. Growing hardware losses mean another raise or a strategic partner is likely within the next year.

Tsunoda says US legal-tech has about 50 competitors for every 5 in Japan, and customers compare LegalOn directly with Harvey. The US and Japan products are now one platform: a ~200-person engineering team reports to US CEO Daniel, a lawyer. His only job, he says, was hiring the right US CEO. This is a rare, frank view of a Japanese SaaS company's US strategy.

Loglass discloses only growth multiples, never absolute ARR or revenue. Balance sheets and the registry show a ¥3.55B FY4/2026 loss and ¥9.06B of cumulative losses, and the ¥7B Series B appears as B1 preferred at ¥1,018. A March 2025 capital reduction (¥4.4B to ¥100M) was used to offset the deficit. Burn is high relative to what is visible, which explains the pivot to an FDE/AI-solutions model.

CLAS says it already has positive operating profit and operating cash flow. That let it borrow long-term, unsecured and without personal guarantees, from regional banks (Shizuoka, Shoko Chukin, Yamanashi Chuo) alongside Panasonic/SBI CVC equity. With 270,000 members and 3,500 business accounts, it is an asset-heavy subscription model that Japanese regional banks are now willing to fund.

About 40% of the BlackRock-led round was secondary sales by early investors and employees who had exercised stock options. Fresh money was sized at ¥7B primary plus ¥3B debt for one to two years. Asuene chose BlackRock as a crossover holder that can keep its shares after listing. Secondaries are being used to relieve VC fund-life pressure so the IPO can wait.

VAT Group's ≈CHF110M purchase of Atonarp was announced in English. This Japanese filing adds what one strategic backer made: Nipro expects about ¥3.9B of gains on sales between Aug and Oct 2026. Japanese corporate investors' filings are often the only public data on exit returns.

Total assets of the Kyoto iPS-cell spin-out (spun out of Takeda's T-CiRA) fell by two-thirds in a year to about ¥1.07B, against a ¥2.27B annual loss. That is under a year of runway at the current burn, so a raise, partnering deal or cuts look imminent. The pressure resembles Megakaryon's, suggesting Kyoto's iPS startups face a funding squeeze.

The official gazette notice for the year to March 2026 shows revenue of ¥11.27B, operating profit ¥1.385B and net profit ¥615M (up 137%), with total assets of ¥44.3B. A profitable, ¥10B+ revenue startup is rare in Japan. The figures support the founder's stated bar of very large profits before any IPO.

STORES's gazette notices include a P&L summary. Revenue grew from ¥9.67B (2021) to ¥15.63B (2025), and gross margin rose from 30% to 38%. SG&A was cut from ¥8.11B to about ¥5.7B, turning a ¥5.16B operating loss into a ¥190M operating profit. The 2024 net profit came from below the operating line. The Bain-backed merchant platform is now self-funding, though only just (1.2% operating margin).

SmartHR and IPO investors could not agree on value. Bloomberg's English report said the target was about $1B, with AI's threat to SaaS multiples weighing. The delay came a day after SmartHR announced ¥30B ARR and a 17.5% FCF margin, which shows public-market SaaS discounts now override strong fundamentals in Tokyo.

The cloud hospital-EMR company was technically insolvent at FY2024, with net assets of −¥1.03B and only ¥173M in assets. The May 2026 ¥3B Series C was therefore a rescue-sized refill as well as a growth round. Insured headcount jumped from 85 to 154 in 15 months, so burn will rise further.

On the first day of FY16, Yamano publicly drops the 'DX/SaaS' identity in favour of being an operator of play experiences. Coming after the The Kids acquisition, it signals a re-rating story for its IPO: a leisure operator with tech, rather than a SaaS multiple.

Thirteen years in, the IoT-auto-finance company has stalled: revenue grew under 4%, the operating loss widened, and it has slipped into technical insolvency with a ¥2.87B accumulated deficit. Its long-flagged IPO looks distant without a recapitalisation.

The ¥1.16B 'Series B' appears in the registry only as J-KISS warrants, a seed-stage instrument rarely used at this size. That avoids setting a price, so the last priced round remains the 2022 B shares at about ¥9.6B. Losses are rising (¥0.95B in FY8/2025, ¥3.03B cumulative) as it moves from coffee kiosks to cooking robots with MOS Food.

The iPS-platelet developer is technically insolvent: net assets of −¥581M, ¥204M in cash and ¥800M of short-term bank loans, after a ¥471M loss (R&D ¥334M). That runway is very short. Rival CiRA (Koji Eto's team) won the state's ¥5B, five-year haemostatic-product project in 2024. Without new equity or a partner, a restructuring is likely.

All ten published notices show losses, and Rapyuta was briefly insolvent (−¥510M net assets) at FY12/2021 before a ¥6.4B Goldman-led round. Registry records show six cycles of raising money and then cutting stated capital back to ¥100M, a tactic to keep SME tax status. Share prices of ¥29,400 → ¥32,000 → ¥45,675 imply about ¥41B.

Toyo Keizai reports the US business reached its first quarterly profit and stayed in the black for the full year. It credits high-CPM demand via DSP/SSP links, first-party and video ads, and merged Japan–US engineering. This is the key fact behind the reported plan to list on the TSE.

The commercial registry records ≈¥2.91B paid in for Class C/C1 preferred shares on 16 Jan 2026, with no matching press release. Compalyze's per-share price of ¥49,496 implies a fully diluted value of about ¥74.6B. The Series D (¥16.5B, Aug 2026) followed. Registry filings can reveal rounds before companies announce them.

Terra Charge says enquiries surged from facility owners whose CEV-subsidy applications and installations with other operators had stalled after 'changes in the business environment'. It offered to take over those projects. Weeks later it acquired Mirai's ENECHANGE charging network. Japan's subsidy-driven EV-charging market is consolidating, and Terra Charge is the buyer.

With about 260,000 companies on ANDPAD and Vietnam and Southeast Asia already entered, Inada sets a US entry target of 2028. Japan's construction-SaaS leader is moving from domestic consolidation to an overseas growth story, so watch for US BizDev hires.

From 1 June 2026, doctors can bill 78 points when the app is used with telemedicine, and adoption requirements were relaxed. Reimbursement rules, not technology, have been the bottleneck for Japanese digital therapeutics, so this directly widens CureApp's prescribing base.

FLUX's model is forward-deployed staff working on client sites, so growth is tied to headcount: ~548 people doubling to over 1,000. NTT Data, JIC, Salesforce Ventures and SOMPO joined a ¥6B Series C that included secondaries. It is an AI-consulting firm valued like software, so watch margins.

The release says outright that the secondary was meant to optimise the cap table ahead of an IPO, a classic 12–24-month pre-listing step. Group revenue has more than doubled for three straight years, about 30% of operating revenue comes from overseas, and next year's plan exceeds ¥10B. That is unusual scale for a retail-lending marketplace.

The FY12/2025 gazette notice shows a net loss of ¥763M, well below the prior year's (Compalyze puts it at about ¥5.9B), with net assets of ¥3.23B. The narrowing supports management's TSE Growth IPO talk for 2027, but at 15 straight loss years investors will want proof of profit first.

Listed giftee's filing for its stake in Kyash gives three years of Kyash's numbers, which Kyash itself never publishes. Revenue grew from ¥1.36B to ¥1.67B, operating losses shrank from ¥1.77B to ¥1.08B, and net assets fell from ¥2.73B to ¥0.53B. CEO Shinichi Takatori holds 30.3%. The strategic money arrived as the equity cushion was nearly gone.

SMBC, Mizuho and MUFG all lending to a loss-making voice-AI SaaS without collateral or a founder guarantee is a strong credit signal in Japan. Debt is now 43% of IVRy's total capital (¥6.5B of ¥15.1B), which limits dilution ahead of a possible IPO.

The construction field-management SaaS company is accelerating its burn: an ¥837M loss against only ¥1.05B in total assets means under 15 months of runway at year-end, so a new round in 2026 is all but required.

Asoview, a leisure-booking platform and SaaS vendor, paid ¥3B for a physical asset base of kids' parks in AEON malls. Combined revenue rises to about ¥11B. CEO Tomohisa Yamano argues that owned physical venues are a moat in the AI era, because Asoview! users who visit kids' parks repeat at twice the normal rate.

NewsPicks reports that Gojo withdrew its Tokyo Stock Exchange listing application after cutting ties with its largest subsidiary, India's SATYA MicroCapital. That changed the basis of its financial statements. One of Japan's most valuable startups (valued above ¥130B) is now off the IPO track.

The net loss narrowed to ¥2.5B, but the accumulated deficit reached ¥15.36B against only ¥3.6B of assets, close to the ¥18B+ it has raised. Ubie is betting on pharma revenue (Ubie for Pharma, clinical trials and real-world data) to fund itself before the next raise.

The FY2025 notice shows a net loss of ¥5.03B, an accumulated deficit of ¥8.67B, and total assets down 38% to ¥7.89B. That is a short runway for an eVTOL maker still working toward certification. It explains the steady stream of smaller strategic raises (for example Resona AM) and the 2026 management reshuffle.

The logistics-workforce platform is technically insolvent: losses equal 36% of revenue and liabilities exceed assets. Its last fundraise must have arrived after the year-end or be imminent. With 627 insured staff it is labour-heavy, closer to a staffing or media company than a SaaS business.

Watanabe says he has told staff he would quit if Startale does not win in 2026. He describes a vertically integrated stack: Soneium and Strium chains, a yen stablecoin with SBI, and the Startale App wallet. He sees the US, not Japan, as the deciding market. It is an unusually blunt founder commitment for a Sony-backed company.

TSR puts the old Spiber's FY2025 net loss at ¥43.8B, with about ¥30B of excess liabilities, mainly financial debt. Special liquidation is expected roughly two years out, once the US subsidiary is wound up. English reports covered Maya Kawana's takeover but rarely these loss and creditor details, which show what lenders and investors actually lost.

Bloomberg reported that SmartNews is preparing a TSE listing for October 2026. Commenters note the earlier ¥10B venture debt as a sign that the US business was still in investment mode. Watch for a TSE approval notice.

ATLA's published contract list puts the deal at ¥965M (signed 10 Feb 2026). It was awarded through a competitive proposal process under the DARPA-style 'Breakthrough Empirical Research' programme. For a two-year-old AI lab, a near-¥1B single government contract is a large and sticky revenue source.

Jin Tomioka says the drink-restocking robots in all three big convenience chains are 99% autonomous. The remaining 1% is handled by remote operators in the Philippines, and that human data (30,000+ hours) is now the training moat for π0-style models. The 7-Eleven humanoid was to enter stores in 1H 2026. He argues Japan's usual funding sizes cannot keep pace in physical AI.

dinii announced the founder-CEO change quietly, in a bare notice published a month after it took effect. Yamada stays as founder and chair, and an engineer-led team (CEO Otomo, VP Masuko) now runs the restaurant-POS company. The notice's unusual line about operating 'in compliance with laws' is worth watching for context.

WOTA's filing under the government's '100億宣言' growth programme discloses revenue of ¥2.0B (FY12/2024) and 147 employees, numbers it does not publish elsewhere. It targets ¥10B+ revenue in 2027 from disaster-response deployments and municipal water-finance projects, with mutual-aid agreements already signed with 16 prefectures plus DMAT. It needs 5x growth in about three years.

This is the earliest Japanese report that the listing application had been withdrawn. It cites growing opacity in the Indian subsidiary's accounting and a group-wide management review. Gojo's English impact report later confirmed SATYA's separation and a probe into improper transactions.

CEO Keito Noguchi describes reviewing unprofitable businesses, tightening cost control and merging group companies, all aimed at a listing and lasting profitability. The latest gazette notice showed a ¥2.16B net loss for FY9/2024, so the VTuber group is in clean-up mode before an IPO.

The Matsuo-lab carve-out (founded March 2025) reached a ¥110B valuation on a ¥2B top-up from Shizuoka FG's VC arm. CEO Junya Ishibashi wants Japanese engineers with from-scratch LLM experience, ideally from Big Tech. Few such people exist, so its main constraint is hiring, not money.

At its 10th-anniversary event, Kaname Hayashi said 18,000+ LOVOTs are in active use (not just shipped) and that 90% of owners stay after three years. That is unusual retention for consumer hardware. He also named Tiger Global and X&KSK among the shareholders.

Takino explains the split of the Dec 2025 ¥36.4B raise: ¥20.9B equity for R&D and overseas growth, ¥15.5B in loans for working capital. The loans are needed because projects that were ¥200–300M five years ago are now often over ¥1B, some above ¥5B, and customer payments lag delivery. This is a rare look at Mujin's deal sizes and cash-cycle pressure.

Nozawa says volume on Japan's power-trading marketplace is approaching ¥3T. Series B money funds a settlement business and joint ventures with megabanks, with M&A next. He is not rushing to list, though a public company will eventually be expected for a marketplace. Overseas engineers are being hired by visa or remotely because Japanese hiring is too slow.

Mirrativ is now a public company, so our 'last round 2022-11' data is stale and its place in a private-startup ranking needs review. The DeNA spin-out reached the TSE Growth market on 18 Dec 2025.

Aoyagi says newmo is cutting investment in Japan's restricted ride-share scheme because utilisation was weak. Taxis and autonomous driving become the pillars, which explains the roll-up of Keikyu Taxi's six firms and Ebetsu Hire. The startup has in effect become a taxi consolidator.

PFN's first June-year accounts show a ¥7.84B net loss, against a tiny ¥10M profit in FY1/2024, after it moved its year-end from January. Compalyze argues the loss likely covers 17 months. Either way, chip (MN-Core) and LLM (PLaMo) spending has pushed Japan's best-known AI company back into the red.

Infcurion is now public, so its place in a private-startup ranking needs review. It opened at ¥1,560, below the ¥1,680 offer, and closed at ¥1,451 on day one. CEO Hiroki Maruyama promises 50% annual growth in B2B payment volume.

The sales-enablement AI company's loss widened to ¥2.22B and total assets fell 23% to ¥4.12B, implying roughly two years of runway at this burn without new money. The notice also shows its acquired subsidiary Poetics (conversation-analysis AI) as closed. Headcount is about 220.

Aculys is no longer an independent startup. Viatris bought 100% for the Japanese pitolisant rights and APAC rights to Spydia (diazepam nasal spray). This is a trade-sale exit for a 2021-founded in-licensing biotech, the model of buying Western drugs for Japan and selling before launch. We treat it as an exit.

CEO Takashi Nakagawa explains that the round began as a small secondary-plus-primary deal. It was rebuilt above ¥10B because many foreign funds have a '$100M minimum' and few Japanese rounds clear that bar. Both co-founders sold a small part of their stakes for the first time after years of low pay. The interview shows how secondaries and round size now act as levers for attracting overseas capital to Japan.

The gazette notice shows revenue of ¥5.6B, an operating loss of ¥3.58B and a net loss of ¥3.74B. Losses roughly equal two-thirds of revenue: LayerX is buying growth (ARR reached ¥10B in Jan 2026) with its ¥15B Series B rather than running for profit.

In Sept 2024 a government call for haemostatic-product development awarded ¥5B over five years to CiRA vice-director Koji Eto's team, beating Megakaryon. Eto's technology originally underpinned the startup. Losing the national flagship programme to its own scientific founders explains Megakaryon's funding squeeze.

Turing lost ¥927M in FY2024, with an accumulated deficit of ¥2.57B and total assets of ¥4.82B, before its ¥27.9B Series A. Pension records show about 83 insured staff (July 2026). The Series A is roughly 30x the previous year's burn, a big step up for a self-driving model developer.

The legal entity behind Utaite (corporate site utaite.co.jp) now carries the name 株式会社代々木アニメーショングループ under representative Masashi Kurata. Its FY11/2024 notice shows total assets up 683% to ¥4.44B and a net loss of ¥498M. That points to a large roll-up tied to the Yoyogi Animation Academy business. English coverage of the name change was not found.

Takino says revenue roughly doubled in 2022→23 and again in 2023→24. He adds that software updates lift palletising throughput 30–40% a year on unchanged robots (for example 400 to 800 cases/hour). Japanese trade press is the only place these growth figures appear.

The gym-and-wellness SaaS lost ¥2.40B in FY6/2024, against ¥0.75B in FY6/2022. Its accumulated deficit reached ¥4.71B with ¥2.37B of assets, before the ¥4.6B Series D in Jan 2025. CEO Kenichi Hasuda told ZUU online in Aug 2026 that an IPO is 'one funding option' and not a goal.