“If the president of an apparel company asks employees, ‘Sales of women’s leggings are growing rapidly this year; how should we respond?’ In the past, this would have required dozens of rounds of communication within the company. In the era of AX (AI transformation), that is no longer necessary.”

On the morning of the 20th at Tokyo Innovation Base (TIB) in Tokyo, Japan. Ryohei Matsuda, head of Ruitten Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of Korean generative AI startup Ruitten Technologies, said, “It is no longer possible to catch up with companies that are achieving business innovation through AI.”

As “AX,” meaning a major shift driven by artificial intelligence, emerges as an urgent task for all companies, Korean and Japanese AI startups came together at Tokyo TIB that day. Following the Korea-Japan summit held on the 13th, a forum was created in the private sector to discuss bilateral AX cooperation, and startup officials at the event stressed in unison that “Korea and Japan must join hands in a generative AI market dominated by the United States and China.”

The Korea-Japan AI Startup Meetup Day “The Future of AX Starts Here” was sponsored by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and jointly organized by the Generative AI Startup Association, the Tokyo office of the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency, and Japanese venture capital firm JET Venture Capital (ZVC). The event brought together eight AI startups from Korea and Japan that are drawing attention in the industry. From Korea, generative AI startups Ruitten Technologies, Psionic AI, SnapTag, Coxwave, and Friendly AI participated, while from Japan, Deweyler, which provides an AI-based global credit evaluation platform, as well as Findy and Querypie AI took part.

At the event, startups from both countries presented the potential of using AX to solve shared challenges such as “population aging.” Lee Se-young, CEO of Ruitten Technologies and head of the Generative AI Startup Association, emphasized, “The scale of the markets and capital in the United States and China is formidable,” adding, “If the Korean and Japanese markets become one, they can lead innovation in AX.”

They also explored cooperation opportunities by sharing the technologies held by each company. Ryohei, head of Ruitten Japan, demonstrated “agent-to-agent (A2A) transactions.” Once a “mother agent” that instantly understands a business operator’s question intent automatically allocates tasks to each agent, a “finance agent” in charge of accounting and bookkeeping receives instructions and processes the work. Deweyler, a Japanese AI credit evaluation startup targeting foreigners, introduced its services and technologies, which are being widely adopted by a variety of finance-related companies such as credit card issuers and lease guarantee firms in 62 countries worldwide.

There was also the view that small-scale startups are in fact essential for rapid AX. Lee said, “When large corporations and governments contemplate AI transformation, it is precisely the startups that have this experience that can present the most practical answers,” adding, “For startups, AX has been a vital task for survival, and Korea and Japan are home to startups that have internalized it more quickly and deeply than anyone else.” ZVC CEO Hwang In-joon also said, “We will support innovation toward AX based on the data that Korean and Japanese startups have accumulated over the years.”

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