December 23, 2024 – TOKYO – Preferred Networks, Inc. (PFN) today announced that it has raised a total of 19 billion yen in the first close of the latest equity financing round led by SBI Group combined with debt financing from financial institutions.  

PFN intends to use the new capital for talent acquisition efforts as well as for development, production and sales of the low-power AI processors in its MN-Core™ series, especially MN-Core L1000, the generative AI inference processor currently under development. The new capital will also be used for enhancing its Japan-made generative AI foundation model PLaMo™, development of solutions and products in a range of domains powered by these technologies, and the large-scale computing infrastructure that supports them. 

Investors (in alphabetical order) 

Development Bank of Japan Inc. 
Mitsubishi Corporation 
SBI Group 
Sekisui House Investment Limited Partnership 
Wacom Co., Ltd. 

Loaning financial institutions (in alphabetical order) 

MUFG Bank, Ltd. 
Resona Bank, Limited 
The Shoko Chukin Bank, Ltd. 
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation 

Following the first close of the financing round, PFN plans to continuously secure capitals until spring of 2025. 

Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President & CEO, SBI Holdings, Inc. said: 

“When AI technologies including generative AI are showing rapid growth, we believe that Preferred Networks’s innovative projects, including its in-house development of next-generation AI semiconductors, will play a key role in and outside of Japan. Going forward, we intend to give full support to the growth of Preferred Networks as the company is taking on the big global issue of the growing power consumption through their ultra-low-power AI semiconductors. Through the collaborations with Preferred Networks, SBI Group will contribute to build the semiconductor ecosystem in Japan.” 

 Yasuhiro Matsui, General Manager, Corporate Finance Department, Division 2, Development Bank of Japan Inc. said: 

“While the advancement of AI is improving productivity and driving innovation in our society as a whole, we are facing new challenges including the shortage of AI semiconductors as a computing resource and the surging power consumption in data centers. Preferred Networks, as a Japanese startup, is expected to make significant contributions to solve the issues as their AI semiconductor MN-Core™ can realize both high computing performance and energy efficiency. We look forward to supporting Preferred Networks’s growth and their effort to take on new challenges.” 

Ko Imamura, Group CEO, Materials Solution Group and Executive Vice President, Mitsubishi Corporation said: 

“Preferred Networks is a rare player that can provide solutions based on a wholistic view of the AI value chain. Mitsubishi Corporation has been in collaboration with the company through our business-and-capital alliance for AI-based materials solutions with its subsidiary Preferred Computational Chemistry, and we have also worked together for the computing power and computing resources business. We will leverage Mitsubishi Corporation’s cross-industry network to support global expansion of Preferred Networks’s AI semiconductors, computing power and AI solutions business, and contribute to social implementation of AI solutions through collaboration with our 100% portfolio company MC Digital, Inc for AI infrastructure and LLM.” 

Nobutaka Ide, President and CEO, Wacom Co., Ltd. said: 

“Wacom and Preferred Networks have been working on joint research with the creative community to unravel the meaning of drawing and writing by the human hand. Through the latest investment, we look forward to deepening our relationship to advance our innovation and technological development so that we can provide human-focused ‘pen and digital ink experience’ that benefit human activities in a variety of domains including education and healthcare.” 

About Preferred Networks 

Preferred Networks, Inc. (PFN) develops advanced software and hardware technologies in a vertically integrated approach, covering the entire AI value chain from chips, supercomputers, generative AI foundation models to solutions and products. Founded in March 2014 in Tokyo, PFN has applied its technologies to a range of industries including manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, entertainment and education. PFN’s MN-3, a supercomputer powered by its MN-Core™ AI processor, topped the Green500 ranking as the world’s most energy-efficient three times in 2020 and 2021. PFN has subsidiaries for materials discovery, robotics and foundation models. https://www.preferred.jp