Global Brain and Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Company have jointly established a corporate venture capital fund, while Japanese AI platform FLUX Inc has announced raising 4.4 billion yen (approximately $32 million) in a Series B round led by DNX Ventures.
Global Brain, Fukoku Life set up a corporate VC fund
Japan’s Global Brain Corporation (Global Brain) and Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Company (Fukoku Life) have jointly established ‘FUKOKU-THE MUTUAL for Next 100 Fund L.P.’ (TMN100), according to an announcement.
TMN100 is Fukoku Life’s first corporate venture capital fund that invests in a wide range of promising startup companies across industry sectors.
Through the establishment of TMN100, Fukoku Life said it aims to strengthen its framework for investing in startups that can become the next generation’s growth engine, improve its profitability as an institutional investor, support startups in their development, and drive business partnerships and collaborations with startups.
As the general partner of the fund, Global Brain will find promising startups, make investment decisions, and provide a wide range of support to startups in which TMN100 invests.
Earlier, Global Brain also joined hands with Tokyo-headquartered Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company to launch a new 5 billion yen ($39 million) venture capital fund.
Japan’s FLUX raises $32m Series B
Japanese AI platform developer FLUX Inc announced raising 4.4 billion yen (around $32 million) in a Series B funding round led by DNX Ventures.
Existing investor Archetype Ventures and new investors Japan Co-Investment, Aozora Corporate Investments, Salesforce Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, SMBC Nikko Securities, and NTT Docomo Ventures participated in the round. The additional funding brings the total funds raised by FLUX to 5.6 billion yen (around $40 million).
The company will use the fresh funding to accelerate the development of FLUX AI — a no-coding AI platform. FLUX AI allows businesses to easily leverage AI technologies such as predictive analytics, natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs), without requiring any prior coding skills or knowledge.
It will also leverage the funds raised to fuel its growth in the Japanese B2B software market, it said. FLUX claims that it has over 1,100 publishers and advertisers using FLUX services.