Startups

The parent of Japan's All Nippon Airways has backed a startup launched by its own employees to further develop remotely controlled avatars that can be used in tourism, retail and health care.

Toyota Motor has teamed up with Chinese autonomous driving startup Momenta to commercialize its high-definition mapping system in China.

Sharp plans to spin off its liquid crystal display unit within two years in a bid to raise funds for investment in the next generation of panel technology.

When a fifth of the people living in the city of Wakayama faced a three-day water stoppage last month to fix a 60-year-old pipe network, they rushed to get ready, only to learn that the repairs could be made without a shutdown.

The venture capital arm of Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings is diversifying its sources of funding by tapping an unusual group of Japanese companies and government agencies to fuel its global expansion at a time when many other investors feel skittish about cooling tech valuations.

Japanese financial group SBI Holdings on Friday said it planned to raise up to 100 billion yen ($920 million) for a new venture capital fund, in what will be the biggest active investment vehicle in Japan focused on startups.

Toyota Motor is investing $394 million into the U.S. "flying taxi" startup Joby Aviation, the Japanese company announced on Thursday.

Founded in 2009, Joby is developing an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL, for urban transportation services.

The fresh funding follows Toyota's investment in February 2018 through its affiliated venture capital subsidiary, Toyota AI Ventures. The carmaker plans to provide Joby with manufacturing and electrification technologies to achieve mass production.

By day, he is the chief executive officer of a Tokyo startup. At night and on weekends, he works shifts as a doctor. He wants to keep it that way because he needs both to stay in balance.

Some people will shudder at Hiroki Enno’s idea of a “social experiment,” yet he believes the project could someday benefit society as a whole.

The 28-year-old CEO of Plasma Inc., a Tokyo-based IT company, is paying participants in exchange for allowing him to film their activities at home — 24 hours a day.

Japan prides itself on having the world’s lowest birth mortality rates for women and infants, but a decline in facilities staffed with obstetricians and gynecologists, as well as the advancing age of first-time mothers here, has raised growing doubts about the future of that claim.These concerns sparked entrepreneur Yhuko Ogata of Kagawa Prefecture, who commercialized Japan’s first electronic medical record software for obstetricians and gynecologists, to seek ways to address this growing uncertainty through remote pregnancy monitoring.