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Obayashi Corporation

Shinagawa Intercity Tower B, 2-15-2, Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Minato-ku, 108-8502, Japan

Overview

Obayashi Corporation is a construction contractor that offers building construction, heavy civil construction, engineering, urban development, and real estate management services. The company offers services necessary to build and maintain office buildings, residences, tunnels, highways, rail systems, bridges, artificial islands, airports, and nuclear power plants. The company’s portfolio of services includes contracting of construction works; regional, urban, oceanic, and environmental development of businesses related to construction; engineering and management related to research, surveying, planning, devising, designing, and supervising; housing business; sale, purchase, exchange, lease, brokerage, ownership, caretaking, and utilization of real estate; operation of type II financial instruments and exchange business, investment advisory, and agency business under Financial Instruments and Exchange Law; planning, construction, retention, maintenance, and management of infrastructures such as road, port, water supply and drainage, municipal building, educational and cultural facility, waste treatment facility, medical facility, and others; recovering environmental pollutions such as purification of soil, sediment of river and lake, water-quality of lake and sea; and collection, transportation, treatment, and recycling of municipal and industrial wastes; power generation and supply of electricity and heat; manufacture, supply, sale, and lease of construction machinery and equipment, and materials and equipment for temporary works; manufacture and sale of concrete products for construction, fireproof or nonflammable building materials, materials for interior and exterior of buildings, furniture and wooden products for buildings, and sale of civil engineering and building materials; undertaking of maintenance and care of buildings, related facilities, and security and guard services; acquisition, development, licensing for use, and sale of software, industrial properties, and know-how related to utilization of computers; operation of information processing service, business of information furnishing service, and supply of telecommunication circuits; sale, lease, and maintenance service of electronic office machinery and equipment, including computers; management of health, medical, sport and leisure facilities, hotels and restaurants, and travel agencies; manufacture and sale of medical machinery and tools; operation of temporary personnel placement agency businesses under the Temporary Personnel Placement Agency Act; undertaking of services related to general affairs, personnel affairs, and accounting matters; operation of insurance agencies; production, processing, and sale of agricultural products, and acquisition, development, licensing for use and sale of agriculture-related technologies; money-lending and suretyship on obligations and other financial services; consulting serviced relates; and more. Obayashi Corporation has presence in Japan, North America, Asia, Middle East, Europe, and Oceania.

Total investments
5
Lead investments
0
Investments · 12mo
1
Active investors
2

Sector focus

  • Construction
Visit website

Investment portfolio

  • Glydways

    Participated · Series C · Apr 2026

    Glydways builds autonomous electric Glydcars that operate on a two-metre-wide dedicated guideway called the Flow Network, designed to move up to 10,000 people per hour through lanes narrower than a parking space. The company says its system can be built at up to 90% lower cost than traditional rail while matching capacity, and emphasizes closed infrastructure to avoid safety issues tied to open-road autonomous vehicles. Founded in 2016 by Mark Seeger, Glydways is working on more than 20 projects globally and has begun construction on a public system in South Metro Atlanta. It has agreements for pilots in the UAE and plans additional pilots in the New York City area, with wider expansion planned for 2027. Glydways employs about 270 people and plans to double headcount over the next two years as it scales deployments.

  • SkyDrive

    Participated · Series D · Jul 2025

    SkyDrive develops electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and is targeting a commercial service launch in 2028. The company is working to obtain type certification for its aircraft and to build mass-production capabilities ahead of that launch. SkyDrive says recent funding from Resona Asset Management will strengthen its business foundation and accelerate aircraft development. The firm positioned the investment as a crossover placement by a public-equity-focused institutional investor, signaling confidence in its growth trajectory. SkyDrive cites Japan’s July 2026 “Japan Growth Strategy” and increased public-private focus on aviation and space as supportive context for its plans. The company intends to use the capital to drive sustainable enterprise value toward its 2028 commercialization goal.

  • Fabrum

    Participated · Series A · Feb 2023

    Fabrum is a Christchurch, New Zealand developer of zero-emission transition technologies building end-to-end liquid hydrogen solutions for heavy transport, mining and aviation. Its core competencies include green hydrogen production, storage, dispensing and system integration. The company also participates in traditional cryogenic markets including liquid nitrogen (LIN), liquid oxygen (LOX), liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquid air (LAIR). Fabrum serves a global customer base spanning animal husbandry, hi-tech research institutions, manufacturing and defence forces. The company was founded by Hugh Reynolds (Technical Director) and Christopher Boyle (Chairman) together with Dr Ojas Mahapatra. Fabrum plans to use the funds to expand its global presence and scale up manufacturing capacity with a new purpose-built manufacturing facility.

  • SafeAI

    Participated · Series A · Jun 2021

    SafeAI builds retrofit hardware and proprietary autonomous software to enable off-road heavy equipment in mining and construction to operate autonomously. The company sells an interoperable, scalable aftermarket solution that transforms existing machines into self-operating robotic assets. SafeAI was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, with offices in Perth, Tokyo, and Delhi. The company more than doubled headcount in 2022 to over 90 employees as it expanded operations across the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India. With the new capital, SafeAI plans to accelerate its autonomous vehicle technology roadmap, invest in engineering and developer teams, and scale its global operations team. Management says funds will be used to meet contractual milestones and expand the company’s global footprint to service growing customer demand. SafeAI develops interoperable autonomous technology and retrofits heavy equipment for autonomous applications in mining and construction. It builds a software platform with advanced, industry-specific AI to convert existing machines into self-operating robotic assets. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate research and development of its interoperable autonomous technology and to support global expansion. Led by founder and CEO Bibhrajit Halder, SafeAI serves a broad ecosystem of industry players with complex needs. The company currently operates with Obayashi Corporation in Cupertino, California. It raised $21M in a Series A to advance these plans. SafeAI develops autonomy software tailored for heavy equipment in the mining and construction industries, aiming for Level 4 (no human driver) capability. Its platform is designed to be open, modular and upgradeable so clients can adopt new advances in AI and autonomy. The company is testing its software on a Bobcat skid loader at its San Jose proving ground and is working with Doosan Bobcat. SafeAI is also working with an unnamed large global mining company to pilot deployments in mining trucks. The startup is emerging from stealth and does not yet have a commercial product in market, though it runs software on actual construction hardware. The founding team includes talent with experience across Apple, Ford and Caterpillar, and the company announced a $5 million funding round to support development and deployment.

  • StructionSite

    Participated · Seed · Jan 2019

    StructionSite develops an AI-driven construction project monitoring platform that maps 360-degree videos onto project drawings and automatically organizes imagery by location and date. The company built a custom 3D computer-vision engine and machine-learning pipelines to compare installed work against estimates, track progress over time, and enable predictive modeling. StructionSite integrates with partners such as Procore, Latium Autodesk, NewMetrix, Dropbox, and Box to fit into existing workflows. Its platform has been used by more than 400 contractors to capture over $190 billion of construction volume, and active projects on the platform grew threefold year-over-year. The company employs roughly 75 people and plans to use new funds to expand platform capabilities and extend its leadership position in the market. Management also highlights gains in remote work productivity and data-team insights around travel savings and carbon-emissions reduction. StructionSite provides a site documentation solution that applies computer vision and machine learning to automatically detect installed work. The technology generates insights into production rates and contractor performance. Working closely with customers and partners for the last 18 months led to the development of VideoWalk™ for automating site capture with 360 video. The company also introduced SmartTrack™, its newest production tracking product. Led by Matt Daly (CEO) and Philip Lorenzo (Chief Product Officer), StructionSite is headquartered in Oakland, CA. It raised a $1.5M seed financing and will use the funds to grow its Engineering and Customer Success teams.

Team

  • Yoshigoro Obayashi

    Founder

  • Takayuki Tomioka

    Senior Account Manager

    LinkedIn