Yutaka Matsuo

In 2010, Yutaka Matsuo developed a system that could track tremor mentions on Twitter to find the first indications of earthquakes. In addition to detecting 96% of the earthquakes that the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) recorded, his system also delivered e-mail notifications to registered users considerably more quickly than the JMA could make announcements.

He mined the stock market similarly to how he mined the web. According to Matsuo, "We were able to categorize news items regarding corporations as either good or negative. We used such data to precisely forecast revenue growth and performance.

Matsuo's status as one of Japan's top AI experts is in part due to his capacity to glean important information from what people are saying online. In addition to serving as president of the Japan Deep Learning Association, a non-profit that supports AI researchers and engineers by providing training and certification examinations, he is a professor at the University of Tokyo's Department of Technology Management. He was the first AI expert named to the board of Softbank, a Japanese technology powerhouse, in 2019.

Matsuo and his team have been helping young entrepreneurs establish globally successful AI start-ups for the past ten years. We want to build an environment similar to Silicon Valley since Japan just lacks one, he claims.

Neural Pocket, a start-up founded in 2018 by University of Tokyo alumnus Roi Shigematsu, is one of the businesses funded by Matsuo. To gain insights into customer behavior, the firm analyzes images and videos.

Matsuo also serves as an advisor for ReadyFor, one of the first crowdsourcing websites in Japan. Haruka Mera founded the business in 2011, after working with Matsuo before as an undergraduate at Tokyo's Keio University. The website, which is collecting money for those impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic, reported a 4,400% increase in the total amount of donations between March and April 2020.

Young researchers interested in founding AI start-ups are urged by Matsuo to look for industrial ties. He claims that Japanese society is quite traditional. "You're more likely to receive a sizable budget from public funding if you're older, but I'm 45, and that's still regarded as too young."