Participated · Equity · Sep 2023

Orts develops personal AI and large language models and offers products such as AI GIJIROKU, altBRAIN, an AI call-center product, and CLONEdev. Founded in 2014, the company has actively researched, developed, owned, and operated generative AI services. In response to growing demand for social and business implementation of generative AI, Orts plans to deepen collaboration with corporate partners and invest in its AI technology infrastructure and product development. The company also aims to secure top talent and strengthen sales and marketing functions. Financially, Orts announced approximately ¥1.9 billion in its latest round, an amount that includes bank debt. After the round, its cumulative funding stands at about ¥8.0 billion. alt Inc. develops Personalized Artificial Intelligence (P.A.I.) and a suite of AI products centered on voice-to-text transcription. Its flagship transcription service, AI GIJIROKU, has achieved solid growth since its release. The company also offers AI Call Center, Nulltitude, AI Translation (Linguacode.AI), AI Moderator and other AI solutions. Proceeds from the fundraising will be used for AI-based voice-to-text product development, sales and marketing, hiring, and R&D to further its digital cloning and P.A.I. initiatives. alt aims to capture share of the global voice-to-text market and become a market-leading company in Asia, advancing toward its P.A.I. vision of "freedom from unproductive labor." The company raised ¥3.52 billion in the Series D and plans to accelerate promotion and recruitment with the funds.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2021

Paytner offers an automated invoice receipt service (Paytner Invoice) and an online invoice prepayment/factoring service (Paytner Factoring) aimed at improving cash flow for freelancers and SMBs. The company was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Paytner positions itself to remove "money stress" for growing businesses and says it is expanding its platform to support broader cash-management and financing needs. The business reports strong traction—Incubate Fund noted cumulative application volumes have surpassed 200,000—and other investors describe the company as a rapidly growing industry leader. Paytner is using the new funding to strengthen hiring and organizational capabilities, accelerate product feature development, and prepare for a potential IPO. The company is pursuing growth toward becoming the domestic No.1 provider in freelance-focused factoring services. Peitner (formerly yup) offers invoice automation via its "Peitner Invoice" service and an invoice prepayment service called "Peitner Factoring." The company targets individual proprietors and small legal entities. Peitner launched Peitner Factoring in September 2019 and Peitner Invoice in September 2022. Since launch, Peitner Factoring has surpassed 55,000 cumulative applications. The company says it will use the newly raised capital to expand hiring, strengthen organizational structure, and enhance product functionality. Cumulatively the company has raised about ¥2.5 billion to date. yup offers a factoring-based advance-payment service that buys invoice receivables to deliver same-day payouts primarily to sole proprietors and small corporations. The company began its service in September 2019 and spent two years improving a proprietary credit-scoring algorithm to minimize default risk. yup differentiates by focusing on smaller-scale users underserved by traditional factoring, and by strengthening bank-system integrations. It is developing a SaaS to digitize invoices, selected for MUFG Digital Accelerator, with planned integrations to banking systems and accounting SaaS to enable end-to-end invoice processing. Financially, yup announced a Series A round that included debt financing totaling about ¥450 million. The company sees competition from domestic payroll-advance and cloud-factoring players but believes there is no equivalent full-service domestic offering today.