Mirai Creation Fund invests in companies and projects that use the latest technologies and business models.   The Fund began operations in November 2015 with financing from three companies: Toyota Motor Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and SPARX Group Co., Ltd.  As the Fund's manager, SPARX targeted three investment areas in intelligent technology, robotics and technologies for a hydrogen-powered society. In the second half of 2018, SPARX launched Mirai Creation Fund II which broaden the investment categories to include electrification and new materials.  Since its inception, Fund I and II have accumulated an extensive track record of investing in promising companies in Japan and across the world.

Mirai Creation Fund

Mitsubishi UFJ Capital is a venture capital firm focusing on life science, ICT, and high technology investments.

Mitsubishi UFJ Capital

NTT DOCOMO Ventures is the venture capital arm of NTT DOCOMO, Inc. specializing in investments in incubation, early stage, middle stage, and later/pre-IPO stage companies. It prefers to invest in the field of information technology, telecommunications, content platform services, battery power, authentication security, BigData, a solution with devices, cloud, and communication platforms. The firm invests in and outside of Japan. It seeks to invest up to about USD $2 million to USD $3 million per investment. It prefers to seek minority stakes of around 20% or less per portfolio. The firm seeks to exit its investments through sales of stocks or transfer of shares to DOCOMO and NTT Group companies. It also runs an accelerator program called DOCOMO Incubation Program. Docomo Innovation Ventures, previously known as NTT Investment Partners Inc., was established on February 20, 2008, and is based in Minato, Chiba, Japan.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures

Senshu Ikeda Capital offers financial consultancy services.

Senshu Ikeda Capital

TechAccel Ventures is a Seed and Early-Stage Venture Capital firm focused on technology startups in Japan. The firm contributes to the development of the Japanese industry by providing investment and support based on a technical perspective.

TechAccel Ventures

The origins of SPARX Group Co., Ltd. date back to 1989 when company founder Shuhei Abe set up one of Japan's first independent asset management boutiques specializing in Japanese equities, SPARX Asset Management Co., Ltd. Since then, the company has grown exponentially as it evolved into a diversified asset management company that now covers the whole breadth and width of Asia-Pacific markets.  Since the 2000s, the company has developed into new investment fields such as clean-tech and renewable energy investments, and venture capital investment through Mirai Creation Fund established together with Toyota Motor Corporation and SMBC in 2015.   .

SPARX Group

Architek

ArchiTek specializes in circuit design for embedded systems, handling high level architecture design.

ArchiTek provides artificial intelligence (AI) chips that are superior to ASICs and GPUs for edge devices with higher performance at a lower cost and with increased versatility and programming capabilities. The Japanese company also maintains a presence in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Generating, collecting, and analyzing enterprise data will never be the same.

Edge Computing

ArchiTek

SiFive and ArchiTek Enable Secure, Private, Flexible Edge AI Computing With AiOnIc Processor

ArchiTek provides artificial intelligence (AI) chips that are superior to ASICs and GPUs for edge devices with higher performance at a lower cost and with increased versatility and programming capabilities. The Japanese company also maintains a presence in the San Francisco Bay Area.In March 2021, ArchiTek launched the “AiOnIc”, its first in-house created chip based on the company’s proprietary architecture. The AiOnIc does not need a cooling fan, and is therefore useful in building water-proof and dust-proof systems. Accordingly, the AiOnIc caters to a range of high-performance and low-power applications such as smart security cameras, drones, autonomous vehicles, and robots.

DC Blox offers edge colocation centers, including disaster recovery services, mainly targeting the underserved markets in the southeastern region of the US. Its clients range from enterprises, cloud providers, government entities, and educational institutions, among others. DC Blox connects users to any destination globally through its private network and ecosystem of global communication partners.DC BLOX’s data centers are located in Birmingham, AL; Huntsville, AL; Chattanooga, TN; Greenville, SC, and Myrtle Beach, SC, with others in development near Atlanta and Berkeley County, SC as of March 2024.In 2023, DC Blox embarked on an <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dc-blox-set-build-hyperscale-133500449.html">expansion strategy</a>, with the development of a hyperscale-ready data center campus in Rockdale County, Georgia, being one of the latest and most significant projects. This new campus was set to feature a sprawling 750,000 sq ft space with a total power capacity of 216MW, supplied by Georgia Power. The project was designed to include a dark fiber ring around the Atlanta metropolitan area, enhancing the connectivity for its tenants and bolstering the company's network infrastructure.Funding and financialsDC Blox raised USD 187 million in funding from Post Road Group and Bain Capital Credit, in March 2021. It aims to use the funds to refinance existing credit facilities, add liquidity to its balance sheet, and expand data center capacity in new and existing locations.

DC Blox

Edgeworx offers the Eclipse ioFog Engine, an application platform that turns hardware into an intelligent edge node. The company allows users to extend their cloud to the edge and run and monitor microservices from any infrastructure. It caters to both developers and operations users to uniformly manage hardware and software.In November 2023, Edgeworx, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/728459">launched Edgeworx Cloud</a>, an enterprise-grade edge computing platform, on the Google Cloud Marketplace. The platform enables enterprises to deploy and manage containerized edge applications from any network without needing to operate their own Kubernetes clusters. It provides secure data management across edge devices, micro-services, hosts, and clients, as well as a hardware-agnostic agent for synchronizing deployments of heterogeneous fleets.Key customers and partnershipsEdgeworx's technology benefits from a range of partners including Docker, Kubernetes, Microsoft, and Red Hat, among others.

Edgeworx

Crosser offers a real-time analytics platform for enterprise Internet of Things (IoT), primarily for industrial IoT (IIoT).The Crosser Platform enables real-time processing of streaming or batch data, to enable industrial IoT, data transformation, analytics, automation, and integration, all to improve the utilization of industrial assets. The platform moves machine data into the cloud while also enabling edge analytics, hybrid integration, and factory floor integration.Key customers and partnershipsCrosser has a robust portfolio of partnerships with leading technology, AI, and ML providers. Some of its notable partners are AWS, Microsoft, SAP, Agora, Oracle, IFS, Siemens, ZEDEDA, and Intel.Funding and financialsIn March 2021, Crosser raised EUR 3 million (~USD 3.6 million) in Venture funding led by NTT DOCOMO Ventures and Montan-Ventures-Saar, with existing investors Industrifonden, Spintop Ventures, 42 Cap, Almi Invest, and Norrlandsfonden also participating.

Crosser

Zededa was founded in 2016 and came out of stealth in 2018 to offer an open edge ecosystem to provide visibility, control, and security when deploying apps remotely on the edge, regardless of the hardware used. The company commercially launched its remote management software in January 2021. The platform allows developers to avoid vendor lock-in and additionally offers support for industries facing more complex edge applications. Moreover, Zededa allows enterprises to mix old and new technology seamlessly, making it for industries like surveillance. The red company has an office in Pune, India, in addition to its headquarters in San Jose, California.In July 2023, the company released a suite of edge application tools including “Edge Access,” which provides access controls and audit tracing for edge deployments. Users can remotely access edge devices from any location at any time without requiring backend configuration or specialized skills.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24108">In November 2023,</a> the company announced a new service named ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service, offering a fully managed Kubernetes service for distributed edge.Key customers and partnershipsThe company has a substantial customer base, with numerous Fortune 500 enterprises spanning various industries like manufacturing, renewable energy, telecommunications, and healthcare. Prominent clients include Rockwell Automation, Emerson, Agora, and VMware.Zededa collaborates with leading technology firms through its global ZEDEDA marketplace, granting partners direct entry to edge operations teams. This marketplace facilitates swift scalability for customers across thousands of edge devices with one-click deployments, eliminating the need for extensive professional services. Notable partners encompass Microsoft, Suse, Juniper Networks, AWS, Rafay Systems, Aviatrix, Fortinet, and more.Through Zededa's technology partnerships, customers can procure hardware devices and have them shipped directly to their intended destinations. This adaptable approach reduces solution expenses and empowers technology providers to offer optimal value to their clientele. Noteworthy partners in this initiative comprise Dell, Supermicro, HP Enterprise, Equinix, and others.During 2023, Zededa collaborated with Applied Digital in August, a company specializing in advanced digital infrastructure for High-Performance Computing, to use ZEDEDA's management and orchestration software. In May, it also partnered with Avassa, a container management platform tailored for edge environments, to facilitate comprehensive orchestration across the entire stack, ensuring security and visibility from hardware to edge applications.Zededa is also a part of multiple industry consortiums to use edge computing to address emerging issues faced by the energy industry. These collaborations include the OSDU Forum as well as LF Energy and Project Alvarium, which are part of the Linux Foundation (a non-profit group to standardize and support the adoption of Linux). In December 2022, the company extended its partnership with Emerson to integrate its edge application management and orchestration solution into Emerson’s DeltaV automation system. This would in turn enable Emerson’s customers to extend this automation system into the distributed edge.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26448">February 2024</a>,it raised USD 72 million in a Series C funding round led by Smith Point Capital, with participation from Hillman Company, LDV Partners, Endeavor Catalyst Fund, Juniper Networks, and others. The funds were directed toward expanding sales and marketing endeavors and speeding up R&amp;D.In January 2023, the company announced that it had grown its annual revenue growth by 300%, and nodes under management by 250% over the previous year.

Zededa

SmartCone Technologies Canadian company specializes in developing Internet of Things (IoT) based safety and monitoring solutions.It mainly offers its services for securing dangerous worksites, controlling bicycle lane traffic, managing vehicle fleets, monitoring traffic incident scenes, crowd control, and site security surveillance, among others. Its devices range from wearables and torches, to constellation positioning systems.In July 2022 SmartCone Technologies announced HeatGuardian, a spin-off company dedicated to providing applications and micro-climate weather stations to calculate localized heat exposure to aid individuals and workers in staying safe during periods of hot weather. This initiative was undertaken in partnership with the Human and Environmental Physiology Research Unit at the University of Ottawa.Key customers and partnershipsThe company mainly caters to customers in the mining, logistics, and energy industries. Some notable customers are Nokia, IBM, DHL, and Exelon.In November 2021, the company partnered with the Centre for Integrated Transportation and Mobility (CITM) to build a database architecture and platform that would capture data from all Smart Mobility Networks, both 4G &amp; 5G elements, Intelligent IoT Nodes, C-V2X device, IoT devices, and other sensors installed on the Smart Mobility Networks.In January 2021, AutoGuardian by SmartCone became one of 37 firms in automotive company AISIN Group’s “open innovation initiatives.” This was in response to AutoGuardian’s successful proof of concept relating to vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology. AutoGuardian uses a SmartConeTM device, equipped with a camera, AI, radar, and onboard edge computing to offer non-line-of-sight alerts by using data such as vehicle speeds, vehicle and pedestrian count, and behavior estimations.Funding and financialsIn April 2019, Smartcone received CAD 187,500 in Debt Financing backed by FedDev Ontario.

SmartCone Technologies

Companies that provide software to enable users to run their applications at the edge.

Companies that produce hardware and infrastructure such as routers and servers that are not embedded on devices.

Companies that provide software that facilitates analytics, cyber security, and IoT at the edge.

Companies that produce embeddable hardware, including microchips, that allow devices to transmit and process data.

Companies that provide software used in data centers to carry out operations effectively.

Companies that offer datacenter infrastructure to facilitate edge computing, including micro data centers deployable to more strategic locations.

Some players in the embedded hardware segment offer microprocessors for running GenAI applications at the edge of enterprise networks

Most companies operating in this industry operate under a B2B SaaS model

Includes companies that support AI/ML workloads and offer IoT data management

All companies in this industry offer edge computing solutions

Offers solutions for managing IoT device data on the edge of users' networks

Includes micro processor manufacturers that particularly target AI workloads for the edge

Many service providers partner with telecom services to leverage 5G to reduce edge application latency

ArchiTek

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