Japan's AI unicorn Sakana AI is building its first mobile app

Japanese AI unicorn Sakana AI has announced that it is developing its first mobile app, tentatively called the "Sakana AI App." The company is now recruiting beta testers. CEO David Ha said the app will mark a new direction for the company.

Sakana AI is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It was co-founded by former Google research scientist David Ha, former Stability AI executive Ren Ito, and Llion Jones, one of the authors of the famous Transformer paper. The company builds AI inspired by natural principles.

Its core technology, called "evolutionary model merge," mimics natural selection to process language and image data, cutting computing costs while improving performance. Within a year of its founding, Sakana AI became Japan's fastest-growing AI unicorn, valued at over $1 billion in 2024.