Organisation
Sakana AI
Evolutionary and model-merging methods rather than ever-larger training runs, with models tuned for Japan.
Sakana AI is a Tokyo lab founded in 2023 by the former Google researchers David Ha and Llion Jones — a co-author of the 2017 transformer paper — together with Ren Ito. Its distinctive bet is on nature-inspired methods: rather than train ever-larger models from scratch, it uses evolutionary techniques and "model merging" to combine existing models, and has published work on an automated "AI Scientist". It positions itself as Japan's national AI champion, building models tuned to the Japanese language, and raised a $135m Series B at a $2.65bn valuation in November 2025, reported as the country's most valuable AI startup.
- Category
- Frontier & foundation-model labs
- Founded
- 2023
- HQ
- Tokyo, JP
- Funding
- $135m Series B at $2.65bn valuation (Nov 2025)
- Key people
- David Ha, Llion Jones, Ren Ito