When David Ha started an AI company in Japan with his former Google colleague, they had a choice: create another huge, energy-intensive tool like ChatGPT, or go their own way.

Since its 2023 launch, the value of their firm Sakana AI has soared past $1 billion, becoming Japan's fastest start-up to reach so-called unicorn status.

"In a space like AI, everyone's kind of doing the same thing. They're just like collecting the world's data, building a gigantic model, sucking up all this energy," Ha told AFP.

For a new venture, "the chance of success is actually quite low, especially in Japan", where the resources to run power-hungry data centres are scarce.

Instead of going head-to-head with top players like OpenAI or Alibaba, Sakana aims to merge existing and new systems, large and small, t

See Full Page