We have made an investment in Tripleize, a leading company in image recognition technology

Kudan Inc. (headquarters in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; CEO Daiu Ko, hereafter “Kudan”) is pleased to announce that Kudan Vision Inc. (headquarters in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; CEO Ken Iizuka, hereafter “Kudan Vision”), a corporate venture capital and one of Kudan’s group companies, has made an investment in Tripleize Co., Ltd. (headquarters in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President Yuichiro Yamada, hereafter “Tripleize”), a leading company in image recognition technology based on deep learning. This is the first investment of Kudan Vision.

Background and purpose of the investment
With its management philosophy of “Putting imagination on technology”, Tripleize develops and provides a wide range of services that utilize cutting-edge technologies such as AI, IoT, and blockchain, including AIZE, which is an image recognition platform based on a proprietary AI engine. Tripleize is one of the few R&D start-up companies that can boast the most advanced made-in-Japan AI technology on a global level, and is actively engaged in R&D of IGO AI, which Tripleize has been working on for some time, in competition with companies in the US and China.
Through the investment, Kudan Vision will support Tripleize to further strengthen its R&D capabilities and expand its business development. In addition, Kudan Vision anticipates that Tripleize’s unique AI technology based on image recognition will contribute to the rapid adoption and development of digital transformation (DX) in Japan, which has become prominent due to the devastating effects of COVID-19, and will foster the growth of the industry.

The integration of Tripleize’s AI technology with Kudan’s Visual SLAM technology, will eliminate the technical limitations of both AI (machine learning for images), which is a general technology area for object recognition, and SLAM, which is a technology area for localization through sensing the surrounding environment. This means that the different technological areas of recognizing objects and recognizing one’s own position can be realized simultaneously with the same sensor, and it is expected to make it possible to grasp, record, and analyze the state of the surrounding environment.

■About Tripleize Co., Ltd.

Establishment:	September 2008
Head Office:	Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Representative:	President Yuichiro Yamada
Capital:	780.8 million yen (Capital reserve included)
Business Description:	Development and provision of the image recognition platform “AIZE”, IT consulting, system integration, cloud services, and acquiring
URL:	https://www.3-ize.jp/

■About Kudan Vision Inc.

Establishment:	January 2021
Head Office:	Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Representative:	CEO Ken Iizuka
Business Description:	Investment