JSTORIES ー On Jan. 30, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike announced details of SusHi Tech Tokyo 2025, Asia’s largest startup event, which will focus on solving global sustainability issues.
This will be the third SusHi Tech Tokyo. Last year, the event’s Global Startup Program was attended by around 40,000 people, sparking some 3,500 business meetings. Notably, SusHi Tech’s many participants from abroad give it a strong overseas focus. Sixty percent of the 434 companies that attended last year were foreign.
Speaking at the TiB Global Day event, which kicked off the 100-day countdown until SusHi Tech Tokyo 2025, Koike said that this year’s event will be the biggest yet, with targets to attract 50,000 participants and 500 VCs from abroad, while facilitating over 5,000 business meetings. She mentioned three key focus areas: AI, quantum technology and food technology.
She also announced that, for the first time, this year’s event will feature a “Public Day,” giving the general public, and particularly young people, a chance to learn about startups and their cutting-edge technologies.
In addition to talk sessions, some participants pitched ideas for startups in English. Japanese and overseas startups also gave presentations and demonstrations to the media.
J-Stories’ executive editor, Toshi Maeda, spoke on stage as co-representative of the Tokyo Hub of Startup Island TAIWAN, a startup support initiative backed by Taiwan’s National Development Council.
Maeda explained that last year’s event featured around 40 promising Taiwanese startups. Taiwan will be well represented at the 2025 event, too, mirroring its long-standing presence in Silicon Valley, with many Taiwanese people involved in the founding of unicorn companies such as Nvidia, as well as YouTube and Yahoo. Meanwhile, many Taiwanese startups have expanded into the Japanese market and grown into global unicorn companies. Such collaboration between Taiwan and Japan is a powerful driver of Tokyo’s startup ecosystem, he said.
One Taiwanese startup with a strong presence in Japan that has grown into a global unicorn is Perfect Corp., which provides solutions that use augmented reality and AI, such as virtual makeup and skin analysis. General Manager and President Rob Isozaki spoke at the TiB event.
Other companies that are on the verge of becoming unicorns, so-called “soonicorns,” also took to the stage. These included KKday, an online travel agency that offers one of Asia’s largest selections of authentic local tours, and Crescendo Lab, which develops and provides marketing solutions for LINE, the most popular messaging app in Japan.
SusHi Tech Tokyo 2025 will be held at Tokyo Big Sight and other venues on May 8-9, with a special day for members of the public on May 10.
Translated by Tony McNicol
Edited by Mark Goldsmith
Top photo by J-Stories (Moritz Brinkhoff)
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