Japanet quadruples venture capital fund to $200M after Anthropic and xAI bets deliver massive returns

Japanet quadruples VC fund to $200M after early Anthropic and xAI bets deliver extraordinary returns

Summary: Japanet Holdings, the Japanese TV shopping company based in Nagasaki, has quadrupled its venture capital fund to $200 million after early investments through Pegasus Tech Ventures in Anthropic, xAI, SpaceX, and OpenAI generated extraordinary paper returns. Anthropic alone has appreciated from a $550 million valuation in 2021 to $380 billion in 2026. The expansion is part of a broader wave of Japanese capital flowing into AI, with SoftBank committing $41 billion to OpenAI, Japan's government launching a $6.34 billion AI scheme, and Japanese AI infrastructure spending projected to hit $5.5 billion this year. Japanet Holdings, the Japanese television shopping company best known for selling kitchen appliances and electronics to retirees in Nagasaki, has quadrupled its venture capital fund to $200 million after early investments in Anthropic, xAI, SpaceX, and OpenAI generated returns that made the original $50 million fund look like a rounding error. The expansion, announced on Monday, turns a five-year-old experiment in corporate venture capital into one of the more improbable success stories in AI investing: a family-run infomercial business that placed bets on frontier AI labs before most institutional investors understood what they were looking at. The fund, launched in March 2021 with Pegasus Tech Ventures as general partner, was initially designed to connect global startups with Japanet's operations in Nagasaki, particularly its $650 million Stadium City development. It was not designed to produce venture-scale returns on artificial intelligence companies. But the fund's early positions in Anthropic and xAI, taken when both were valued at a fraction of their current worth, have appreciated on paper by orders of magnitude. Anthropic was valued at $550 million when it raised its Series A in May 2021. It closed a $30 billion raise in February at a $380 billion valuation and is reportedly fielding offers north of $800 billion. xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, reached a $230 billion valuation in January before being acquired by SpaceX in February as part of a combined entity valued at $1.25 trillion. Japanet's path to AI investing starts with a camera shop. Akira Takata, born in Nagasaki in 1948, took over his family's camera store and in 1986 turned it into a mail-order business. He pioneered radio shopping on NBC Nagasaki Broadcasting, then moved to television, and built Japanet Takata into Japan's leading home shopping network. The company sells everything from air conditioners to tablet computers, primarily to an older Japanese demographic, through infomercials that emphasise simplicity and value. Revenue reached 262 billion yen, roughly $1.7 billion, in fiscal 2023. Akira retired as chief executive in 2015. His son, Akito Takata, now runs Japanet Holdings and its 13 group companies with approximately 2,000 employees. Under Akito, Japanet diversified into sports and regional development. The company acquired V-Varen Nagasaki, a professional football club, in 2017 and established Nagasaki Velca, a basketball club, in 2020. In October 2024, it opened Nagasaki Stadium City, a 100 billion yen complex featuring a 20,000-seat stadium, a 6,000-seat arena, a hotel, and commercial facilities. The development incorporated smart city technology in partnership with SoftBank, including AI-driven crowd management, sensor-based logistics, and a dedicated app for services. It was this project that led Japanet to Pegasus Tech Ventures and, through Pegasus, to the companies building the technology that would define the decade. Pegasus Tech Ventures, based in San Jose, California, operates what it calls a "venture capital as a service" model. Founded by Anis Uzzaman, the firm manages approximately 40 funds with roughly $2 billion in total assets, investing in about 290 startups. It has achieved 76 exits including 25 IPOs. Its corporate partners include AISIN, which expanded its own Pegasus-managed fund to $100 million in February, Denka, SEGA, Sojitz, NGK Spark Plugs, and ASUS. The model connects Japanese and Asian corporations with Silicon Valley deal flow in exchange for capital and strategic distribution partnerships. For the Japanet fund, approximately 70% of capital has gone to US and European startups, with the remainder in Asia. Focus areas include generative AI, robotics, and space technology. Check sizes range from $100,000 to $1 million for early-stage companies and $1 million to $5 million for later rounds. Neither Japanet nor Pegasus disclosed specific investment amounts, entry valuations, or return multiples for the Anthropic and xAI positions. But the maths is not complicated. A fund that invested even $1 million in Anthropic at a $550 million valuation in 2021 would hold a position worth roughly $690 million at the current $380 billion valuation. The fund also holds positions in SpaceX and OpenAI. "Everybody wants a piece of the Silicon Valley AI action," Uzzaman told Bloomberg. "For the Asian corporations, it's an opportunity to invest as well as find new technologies and innovations in aligned fields." Akito Takata framed the expansion in characteristically modest terms: "We are excited to continue leveraging this fund to seek out the world's latest technologies and create new value that brings more joy and enrichment to our customers' everyday lives." Japanet's fund expansion is part of a broader pattern of Japanese capital flowing into AI at an accelerating rate. SoftBank has committed $41 billion to OpenAI, lifting its stake to 11% and booking a $4.2 billion gain. Japan's government announced a one trillion yen, $6.34 billion, five-year scheme beginning this fiscal year to back domestic AI development including foundation models. Japan's AI infrastructure spending is projected to surpass $5.5 billion in 2026, a sevenfold increase since 2022, according to IDC. Microsoft has committed $10 billion over four years to Japanese AI infrastructure in partnership with SoftBank and Sakura Internet. The dynamic is that Japan has capital, an aging population that makes AI-driven automation strategically necessary, and a corporate culture that is increasingly willing to invest offshore to acquire technology it cannot build domestically at the same pace. Venture capital firms are racing to deploy billions on the back of AI returns, and Japanese corporations are joining the queue. Hitachi raised a fourth fund totalling $400 million, taking its total allocation past $1 billion. Fujitsu Ventures has invested in Sakana AI and QunaSys. The Japanet fund is smaller than these, but its returns relative to its size may be among the most striking. The returns that justified the fund expansion are, for now, entirely on paper. Anthropic is private. xAI was absorbed into SpaceX, also private. OpenAI is expected to file for an IPO in the second half of this year but has not yet done so. The positions are illiquid, the valuations are set by the last funding round rather than by public market trading, and the history of venture capital contains no shortage of investments that looked transformative on paper until they were not. Not all AI bets pay off: Builder.ai, backed by Microsoft and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, collapsed into bankruptcy despite raising hundreds of millions. But the concentration of value in frontier AI companies is also unlike anything venture capital has produced before. Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI are collectively valued at over $2 trillion. AI companies are commanding unprecedented valuations that some of their own investors question, yet each successive funding round prices them higher. Institutional heavyweights including Sequoia, which broke its own convention against backing competitors to invest in Anthropic alongside its existing OpenAI position, are treating these companies as generational assets rather than conventional startups. For Japanet, the question is what a $200 million fund can do that a $50 million fund could not. The answer, given the trajectory of AI valuations, may be less about finding the next Anthropic than about the size of the position it can take when it does. The Japanet fund's original mandate was to bring global technology to a stadium in Nagasaki. Its actual achievement was getting into the companies building general-purpose artificial intelligence before most of the world's largest investors understood what that meant. A family that went from cameras to infomercials to football clubs to frontier AI is, if nothing else, evidence that the returns in this market have been large enough to rewrite any investor's identity.

'They're sweating': Why Japanese giants are pouring money into Silicon Valley startups | Fortune

Japan has long gone its own way on technology, even inspiring its own term, "Galapagos syndrome," for products and services that thrive at home yet go nowhere abroad. Now, the country's corporate giants are worried they're about to miss another technology wave, and are writing big checks to make sure they don't. On Tuesday, Pegasus Tech Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based investor, said it will quadruple the corporate venture fund it manages for Japanet, one of Japan's largest mail-order and television shopping networks, to $200 million. That follows an earlier decision by auto supplier Aisin to double its Pegasus-managed fund to $100 million. It's the latest sign that legacy Japanese companies, long stereotyped as laggards in digital transformation, are racing to tap the AI boom. "They're sweating," Anis Uzzaman, the founder and CEO of Pegasus, tells Fortune. "They know the AI revolution is happening. They're behind the U.S. and the Europeans when it comes to adoption." Pegasus offers what it calls "venture-capital-as-a-service," administering corporate venture capital for large companies, primarily in Asia, and connecting them to startups its clients would struggle to reach on their own. "Companies are getting slowed down by their current R&D, and they're looking for ways they can innovate faster to keep up with the rest of the world," Uzzaman says. "One way to do that is to partner with good startups, but they don't know how to get hold of them." Then there's the language barrier: Most Japanese companies operate in the local language, which can isolate them from English-based materials in Silicon Valley. Japan's AI infrastructure spending is expected to surpass $5.5 billion this year, according to a forecast from the International Data Corporation. And more investments are coming: Microsoft on April 3 pledged to spend another $10 billion on Japan's AI infrastructure over the next four years. Japanet, founded in 1986, is one of Japan's largest mail-order shopping networks, similar to QVC in the U.S. The company has also recently embarked on an ambitious diversification program, adding a travel and cruise business, as well as professional sports teams. Initially, Japanet was looking for technology to bring back to its home base of Nagasaki, to be used in the city's new soccer stadium. "When they said, 'we need a security system for the stadium,' we looked at every relevant security‑system startup and found the ones that would fit their stadium," Uzzaman says. "They were able to have good faith in this company, made some investments, and then integrated the technology into the stadium." That initial success pushed Japanet to consider more frontier ventures, toward companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. "These companies are growing at a speed we have never experienced in the venture capital industry," Uzzaman says. "We are excited to continue leveraging this fund to seek out the world's latest technologies and create new value that brings more joy and enrichment to our customers' everyday lives," Akito Takata, president of Japanet Group, said in a statement announcing the expansion of the fund. Corporate venture capital is now a key part of the startup economy, with company funds participating in a large share of global funding rounds. Pegasus, founded in 2011, has invested in nearly 300 startups with 76 exits, including 25 IPOs. It manages about $2 billion in assets. Its client roster spans video-game publishers Sega and Bandai Namco; Taiwanese PC maker Asus; Japanese trading house Sojitz; U.S. refiner Marathon Petroleum; and snack maker Calbee. Companies provide most of the capital; Pegasus contributes a nominal share for compliance reasons and manages the investments. Japan's outsized footprint among Pegasus's customer base is partly due to Uzzaman's own background in the country, having grown up and gone to school there. But there's structural reasons too, like Japan's demographic decline and a shrinking working-age population. "A lot of Japanese corporations come to us and say they don't have enough people working in manufacturing or in factories. So they're asking for physical AI, robotics, automation solutions," Uzzaman explains. Still, much of the interesting innovation, at least according to Pegasus, is happening in the U.S. Uzzaman says roughly 70% of Pegasus's investment goes to U.S. and European startups.

Japanet expands its VC fund after bets on Anthropic and xAI pay off

Japanese home shopping company Japanet is expanding its venture capital fund with San Jose-based Pegasus Tech Ventures, following the success of early bets in SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. The Nagasaki-based retailer known for infomercials targeting seniors in aging Japan will allocate $200 million to the fund, up from an initial $50 million in 2021, following "significant growth" in investments so far, the companies said in a statement. The fund, of which Pegasus is general partner, will focus on areas such as generative AI, robotics and space technology. Its Japan portfolio includes startup Aillis, which seeks to use artificial intelligence to analyze medical scans. Asian companies have struggled to win stakes in promising startups in Silicon Valley, hampered by a lack of personal connections and reputation for slow decision-making. Pegasus also manages startup investments on behalf of Toyota Motor-affiliate Aisin, Japanese chemical maker Denka, Taiwan's Asustek Computer and Acer and Indonesia's pharma company Kalbe Farma. "Everybody wants a piece of the Silicon Valley AI action," Pegasus Chief Executive Officer Anis Uzzaman said on a video call. The venture capital firm manages some 40 funds with about $2 billion in total assets and investments in 290 startups including Airbnb, DoorDash and Coinbase, he said. The investments also often yield commercial relationships. "For the Asian corporations, it's an opportunity to invest as well as find new technologies and innovations in aligned fields," he said. "For the American AI companies, it's access to new global markets."