On September 18, Japanese artificial intelligence company SakanaAI raised about 30 billion yen (about 214 million US dollars) in its Series A financing, with a company valuation of 1.5 billion US dollars. Sakana AI was founded in July 2023 by former Google researchers only one year ago. Investors in this round of financing include financial institutions such as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Nomura Holdings, as well as well-known companies such as NEC, Itochu Corporation, KDDI and Fujitsu. SakanaAI has obtained processing time on Japanese supercomputers and is working with multiple organizations to strengthen Japan's AI ecosystem. This echoes NVIDIA's recent plan to support Japan's sovereign AI projects.