Japanese companies double down on startup investing

Fujitsu and Mitsui Chemicals are among the latest Japanese companies to launch corporate venturing funds, bucking a trend of corporations in other countries either spinning off investment units or closing them down.

Fujitsu, the Japanese IT and electronics group, launched a second corporate investment fund which will deploy some ¥15bn ($104.2m) over a 10-year period. The fund follows on from the $69m investment fund Fujitsu set up in 2021, and it is the latest in a series of new funds set up by Japanese companies since the start of 2025.

Meanwhile, Japanese chemical company Mitsui Chemicals launched a new US-based CVC fund, which will invest $60m over 10 years. Mitsui Chemicals had already had a CVC fund that was managed by Global Brain, a CVC-service provider, but this new investment vehicle will focus on the US and has twice the amount of capital as the previous fund.

Earlier in 2025, Japanese electronics company TDK unveiled a new $150m fund bringing its total capital allocation to $500m. TDK Ventures, TDK’s venture capital arm, has also opened several new offices in the past few years, now operating from Silicon Valley, London and Bangalore.

Japanese industrial conglomerate Hitachi, meanwhile, raised a fourth, $400m fund in February, bringing its total capital allocation to over $1bn. The number of corporate venture capital units with more than a $1bn in capital is still relatively rare, and shows that the unit, which was launched by Stephan Gabriel in 2019, is still seen as valuable for Hitachi. This latest fund will allow Hitachi to pursue bigger investments in AI.

Japanese companies are doubling down on corporate investing at a time when many other corporations are slowing down CVC activities. JetBlue, the US airline group, for example, recently sold off its investment arm, JetBlue Ventures, to concentrate on returning to profitability. GCV has anecdotally heard from many corporate investment leaders that investment pace has slowed as corporations navigate a difficult business climate.

Join us in Tokyo in November

Connecting you to the Asian corporate venture ecosystem.

The Japanese government, however, has been keen to encourage its corporations to set up investment arms and to embrace the startup economy, to avoid being left behind in technological innovation. Many Japanese CVC units are set up with a heavy emphasis on providing strategic returns for the parent corporation — through collaboration with the startups, early access to technologies or entry into new markets — rather than on financial returns on the investment. Japanese CVC units may, therefore, be somewhat more shielded from today’s difficult investment market.

Other Japanese corporations that have either launched new corporate venturing units this year or raised new funds for these units include:

• LY Corporation
• Daiwa Securities
• CryptoGames

In its four years in operation Fujitsu has so far invested in 17 startups and says it has achieved “solid results in both strategic and financial aspects”.

Investments by the Fujitsu Ventures team include quantum computing algorithm developer QunaSys and Sakana AI, a Japanese startup developing foundational AI models.

Additionally, last year, Fujitsu Ventures added impact investing to its mandate and made its first impact investment, in Gojo and Company, a Tokyo-headquartered company that provides banking services to people in developing countries.