Japan
Asia · Pop. 124M · #14 startup ecosystem by EV
Adjacent ecosystems by EV
Startup hubs
Inside Japan: top 11 startup hubs
Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value of all tracked startups headquartered there.
Startup funnel
Japan's power-law funnel
From every VC-backed startup down to the biggest scale-ups. Conversion rates show what fraction of one tier graduate into the next. Capital figures (where shown) are total VC deployed at that stage.
Enterprise value · 2015–2025
Japan grew 5.7× since 2015
Combined enterprise value of every tracked startup headquartered in Japan that's still operating today, totalled by founding-year cohort.
Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems
How Japan stacks up
Peers chosen from the same Asia cluster within ±70% of Japan's combined EV. The scatter plots growth × current size for the wider continent — outliers in the upper-right are ecosystems compounding fastest.
Top overview
Asia ecosystems — combined view
Top ecosystems in Asia ranked by combined EV. Japan's row is highlighted.
| # | Ecosystem | Combined EV | 5-yr EV growth | Unicorns | VC invested | Tracked startups |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $5.8T | 3.2× | 479 | $33.4B | 24.5K |
| 2 | India | $883.7B | 7.1× | 125 | $13.9B | 13.3K |
| 3 | Israel | $599.9B | 5.6× | 128 | $10.7B | 4,762 |
| 4 | South Korea | $438.6B | 15.6× | 41 | $8.2B | 7,931 |
| 5 | Singapore | $359.5B | 9.6× | 38 | $3.3B | 3,900 |
| 6 | Japan | $255.3B | 6.4× | 19 | $4.3B | 7,794 |
| 7 | Hong Kong | $185.6B | 13.0× | 21 | $3.6B | 1,222 |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $79.1B | 10.6× | 21 | $3.9B | 1,553 |
| 9 | Indonesia | $64.8B | 5.0× | 12 | $485.3M | 1,208 |
| 10 | Taiwan | $59.4B | 7.9× | 5 | $209.1M | 621 |
| 11 | Türkiye | $55.7B | 20.7× | 8 | $714.3M | 2,031 |
| 12 | Vietnam | $34.3B | 15.3× | 4 | $461.5M | 616 |
Patent intelligence
Japan startup IP portfolio: 1.5M patent families
Granted patent families assigned to startups headquartered in Japan. Aggregated across the country's hub-level filings — Bay Area, Boston, etc. roll up under the United States row, the same way Tokyo and Osaka roll up under Japan.
Sector concentration
Where Japan punches above its weight
Sectors in which Japan's share of the global unicorn pool is bigger than its overall share. A 5× over-index means Japan is 5× more represented in that sector than in the global average. Source: top-hub aggregation across the 18 simplified sectors.
Premium analytics
What we don't show on this page (yet)
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