Innovation Management

In September 2018, we launched KDDI Digital Gate, our business development hub for the IoT and 5G era in Toranomon, Tokyo to create new business solutions with our corporate customers. In September 2019, we expanded KDDI Digital Gate to Osaka and Okinawa, which have already been used by over 450 companies in total.
KDDI Digital Gate provides a KDDI development team and a project room where prototypes can be developed rapidly with agile development methodology; co-creation workshops are held to identify potential issues and come up with innovative ideas through design-oriented thinking; and hands-on demonstrations and testing using various telecommunications technology, including 5G and IoT, are conducted. KDDI will work with a professional group made up of highly specialized partners, aiming to speed up the process of identifying needs, creating, learning and improving, helping customers to provide services with high market value to society as quickly as possible.

KDDI Open Innovation Fund is a corporate venture capital operated by KDDI and Global Brain Corporation that invests in promising start-ups across the world. We strongly support the growth of our investee companies, using our broad networks with different companies and marketing skills, as well as linking with our services. In April 2018, we launched KDDI Innovation Fund No.3.
We established an investment program to strengthen initiatives in fields of increasing importance for the 5G era, including AI, IoT and big data. Drawing on KDDI's and KDDI Group companies' technological and business insights and networks of venture companies, we support promising new venture companies. KDDI Open Innovation Fund No.3, which is active as of May 2021, has invested approximately 20 billion yen in total. The fund program will also make it possible not just for KDDI but also for its group companies to proactively undertake joint development efforts with venture companies.
We have specialist personnel based in San Francisco, the United States, and Singapore, where we are looking to invest in start-ups with the latest technologies or innovative business models. We offer wide-ranging support for business development, marketing and localization for our investee companies when they plan to expand their business in Japan.

In 2011, we launched KDDI∞Labo, a platform that enables start-ups promoting new services to collaborate with partner alliance members that have a wealth of assets and know-how in various industries with the aim of co-creating new businesses that impact society in the era of 5G. This program offers total support to selected teams, including business cooperation, creation of testing opportunities, and discussions about business co-creation with the partner alliance, which comprises over 40 various major companies that support the mission of KDDI∞Labo. The platform also offers a variety of other support, including business matching opportunities through pitching events, 5G testing environments, and the provision of KDDI Digital Gate assets.

In December 2020, KDDI and KDDI Research, inc. opened and continue to operate the KDDI research atelier in Toranomon, Tokyo, as a survey and applied research center to propose new lifestyles toward 2030.
KDDI research atelier aims to solve medium- to long-term issues facing consumers and society and to enable lifestyles optimized for individual consumers. To achieve these goals, the atelier will partner with companies and research institutes in Japan and overseas, leveraging the KDDI Group's assets that include KDDI Digital Gate and KDDI ∞ Labo, based on the concept of next-generation society "KDDI Accelerate 5.0" toward 2030 that is designed to accelerate the creation of "Society 5.0" with 5G. In August 2021, we launched "FUTURE GATEWAY," a co-creation initiative with advanced consumers, to propose and demonstrate new lifestyles for the year 2030.

In order to deepen and accelerate basic research on the seven technologies set forth in "KDDI Accelerate 5.0," in 2020 the Advanced Technology Research Laboratories, KDDI Research, Inc., began joint research with university researchers with proven track records in their respective research fields around the world. Following the AI and wireless communication fields, in fiscal 2021 we began joint research in the XR field. The dispatched young researchers have been working together with top-class researchers and students from Europe and the U.S. in a challenging and competitive environment, striving to generate research results that are the best and first in the world. Based on the results obtained through this joint project, KDDI Research, Inc. will contribute to the early realization of a lifestyle optimized for individual consumers as a goal of KDDI Group.