By Sherry Qin


Nvidia is investing in Sakana AI and partnering with the artificial-intelligence research company to spur AI development in Japan.

Sakana AI, founded by Google engineers in 2023, announced the collaboration with the U.S. chip giant on Wednesday, saying it raised over $100 million from a group of investors.

The series A round was led by venture-capital firms New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures and Lux Capital.

The Tokyo-based company previously raised $30 million in a seed funding round led by Lux Capital in January.

Sakana AI said it will work with Nvidia on artificial-intelligence research, data centers, and AI community building in Japan.

The AI lab is developing technology aimed at automating the development of foundation models, based on nature-inspired ideas.

"The team at Sakana AI is helping spur the democratization of AI in Japan by developing cutting-edge foundation models to automate and speed up scientific discovery with Nvidia's accelerated computing platform," Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in a statement.


Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

09-04-24 2127ET