Japan
Asia · Pop. 124M · #14 startup ecosystem by EV
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 — public and private companies combined, totalled by founding-year cohort.
Adjacent ecosystems by EV
Startup hubs
Inside Japan: top 11 startup hubs
Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value, paired with their 5-year growth multiplier.
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
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 | $884B | 7.1× | 125 | $13.9B | 13.3K |
| 3 | Israel | $600B | 5.6× | 128 | $10.7B | 4,762 |
| 4 | South Korea | $439B | 15.6× | 41 | $8.2B | 7,931 |
| 5 | Singapore | $359B | 9.6× | 38 | $3.3B | 3,900 |
| 6 | Japan | $255B | 6.4× | 19 | $4.3B | 7,794 |
| 7 | Hong Kong | $186B | 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)
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.
Get the full Japan ecosystem on Dealroom
Live company-by-company deal flow, full cap tables, founder pedigrees, hiring signals and revenue trajectories.