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JapanPlatform

Asia · Pop. 124M · #15 startup ecosystem by EV

A public taster of the full Japan ecosystem on Dealroom — request a demo for live deal flow, founder pedigrees, AI-talent maps, and the full cap table for every company below.

🦄 New unicorns by year
0
Annual $1B+ outcomes, unsmoothed
🐎 Cumulative thoroughbreds
50
Company revenue history, 2016-2025
Enterprise value
$235B
Actual EV series, 2015-2025

Largest rounds

Largest funding rounds in Japan

A live treemap of $100M+ rounds from the Dealroom API. Each cell is one round into a Japan-headquartered company, grouped by Dealroom sector.

Largest rounds in Japan - 2026

Every $100M+ VC round into Japan-headquartered companies in 2026, grouped by Dealroom sector.
- rounds · - raised
Live from Dealroom API Open full VC dashboard

Startup hubs

Inside Japan: top 11 startup hubs

Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value, paired with their 5-year growth multiplier.

By enterprise value
1 Tokyo $198B
2 Osaka - Kobe $22.6B
3 Hyogo Prefecture $10.4B
5 Kyoto $5.5B
7 Okinawa $3.7B
8 Fukuoka $1.6B
By 5-yr EV growth
2 Osaka - Kobe 9.5×
4 Kyoto 7.7×
6 Tokyo 5.2×
7 Okinawa 4.1×
8 Fukuoka 3.9×

Startup funnel

Japan's power-law funnel

From the first cheque written to a $10B+ outcome. Each arrow shows what fraction of companies at one stage graduate to the next, tracked by founding cohort.

Pre-Seed
1,699
Seed
1,543
Series A
1,170
Series B
463
Series C
169
Unicorn
19
Decacorn
1

* C→Unicorn and Unicorn→Decacorn rates are derived from current counts (no founding-cohort data); the four mid-funnel rates use Dealroom's cohort tracking.

VC investment

How much venture capital flows into Japan

VC investment into Japan-headquartered, VC-backed companies, broken down by round size, company location, sector and funding stage. Live from the Dealroom Next Gen API.

Notable companies

Top private companies in Japan

Up to 20 names per tier from Dealroom's tracked dataset. Decacorns are valued $10B+, unicorns $1B+, thoroughbreds have crossed $100M in revenue.

Decacorns $10B+ valuation 1
Rakuten
Unicorns $1B+ valuation 19
Preferred NetworksShiftPaidyAnycolorSpiberSmartNewsMoney ForwardPeptiDreamFreeeGenki RoboticsDeNASMS JapanSansanAdvasaSakana AIUzabaseRenewable JapanSmartHRMercari
Thoroughbreds+ $100M+ revenue 50
RakutenRenesasGA technologiesMercariDeNAMIXIShiftRENOVA JapanIStyleRaksulSMS JapanAnyMindEuglenaMoney ForwardSansanAnycolorMedleyTimeeFreeeSakura Internet

Academia

Japan's academic flywheel

Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to Japan.

University-linked startup formation
410
University spinouts
1,233
Total alumni-founded companies
737
Of which startups (<$15M raised)
385
Breakouts ($15M-100M)
111
Scaleups ($100M+)

Location comparison

How Japan stacks up

Compare Japan with similarly sized ecosystems in Asia — switch between combined EV, 5-year EV growth, and a growth × size view. Expand the table for the full ranking.

$602B
$430B
$319B
Japan
$233B
$179B

Combined enterprise value of each ecosystem.

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.

Granted patent families
1.5M
Filed by tracked startups headquartered in the country.
11867 patents per million residents · #3 globally
Top patenting hubs
1 Greater Tokyo Area, Japan 1.1M
2 Keihanshin Major Metropolitan Area, Japan 218K
3 Chūkyō Major Metropolitan Area, Japan 170.4K
4 Fukuoka-Kitakyushu Major Metropolitan Area, Japan 8,840
5 Sendai Major Metropolitan Area, Japan 3,344
6 Kagoshima Metropolitan Area, Japan 513

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.

✈️ Aviation
16.8×
1 unicorns · 8.3% of global sector
🦾 Robotics
14.4×
2 unicorns · 7.1% of global sector
🚀 Space
12.6×
2 unicorns · 6.3% of global sector
4.58×
5 unicorns · 2.3% of global sector

Premium analytics

What we don't show on this page (yet)

Sector breakdowns, founder origins, AI-talent leaderboards and live deal flow are gated to logged-in Dealroom users. Book a demo to access the full Japan dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.

Sector breakdown
Where Japan's unicorns concentrate
Fintech
AI / Enterprise SW
Health Tech
Biotech
Cybersecurity
Consumer
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Capital autonomy
Japan's domestic vs foreign capital mix
% domestic VC by stage
Cross-border lead investors
Sovereign-fund participation
Foreign-LP exposure
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Recent momentum
Japan's VC investment trajectory by stage
2024 vs 2025 by stage
Round-size trends
Stage-conversion deltas
Quarterly velocity
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Founder origins
Where Japan's startup founders come from
By country of origin
Per capita
Top universities
Top alumni-factory companies
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AI talent
Top employers of AI talent in Japan
Core AI roles
Frontier AI roles
YoY hiring growth
Senior + lead engineers
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Deal flow
Live deal flow & funding rounds in Japan
New rounds last 30 days
Stage breakdown
Active investors
Round-size trends
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Get the full Japan ecosystem on Dealroom

Live company-by-company deal flow, full cap tables, founder pedigrees, hiring signals and revenue trajectories.