ELYZA Robotics
KDDI group physical-AI company building robot foundation models and deploying robots in Japanese retail, logistics and factories
Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded in 2026.
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Japan is building physical AI through alliances between its industrial incumbents and foreign AI platforms, not through a venture-funded start-up wave. Of 121 robotics funding events MEKAWIRE has recorded in 2026, one is Japanese, while FANUC, Yaskawa, Kawasaki, Hitachi and Fujitsu signed at least five physical-AI partnerships with Nvidia, Google, Agile Robots and each other between July and September. In October Mitsubishi Electric and ABEJA began building model layers at home on the machine-tool floor, and KDDI launched ELYZA Robotics with JPY 30 billion of R&D through fiscal 2030. The open question is who will own the robot models.
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