Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based startup founded in 2023 by David Ha, Llion Jones and Ren Ito, will move from adapting existing models to building Japanese models from scratch. Until now, the company has used post-training and evolutionary model merging to improve models’ understanding of Japanese language, values and use cases. In November 2025, it raised ¥20 billion, or about $135 million, in a Series B round valuing the company at $2.65 billion, following an approximately $214 million Series A round. It is developing the Namazu models, the Fugu orchestration platform, the Marlin research agent and Aquarium, announced on October 23, 2026. This strategy is part of Japan’s push for sovereign AI, alongside the launch of the RSI Lab focused on systems that can improve over repeated development cycles.
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