By Mike Kim / Special to The Japan News

12:03 JST, March 26, 2025

My guest and I raised our first beers with a “kampai” toast at Andy’s Shin Hinomoto in November 2024. With its unique mix of Japanese people and foreigners, the popular izakaya pub in Tokyo’s bustling Yurakucho district is one of my favorite spots to host clients and friends.

On this occasion, I was hosting an acquaintance from NTT Data, a Tokyo-based IT services provider. I reached out to him to propose a collaboration with U.S. startup Bifrost AI, a client of mine specializing in 3D synthetic data generation for artificial intelligence training. Unlike real-world data, synthetic data is artificially generated, allowing for more scalable and diverse datasets.

As a result of the dinner in Yurakucho, I later got to know Takashi Okada, who develops new businesses at NTT Data’s Innovation Center. Okada and his team then had a meeting with people from Bifrost AI, which cemented the tie between the two companies. A project was kicked off in just three months. This example appeared to illustrate Japanese corporations’ desire to quickly access the technology of........

© The Japan News