COMPANY
| Company Name | GITAI Japan, Inc. |
| Founded | July, 2016 |
| Representative | Sho Nakanose |
HISTORY
GITAI was founded with a vision of disrupting the increasing demand for construction and maintenance activities in space by developing more capable and less expensive robotic systems. As we progressed our products in TRL from concept stage to breadboard, to prototypes, and ultimately to deployment on the ISS, we have attracted increasing levels of venture capital investments.
July 2016
GITAI founded
September 2016
First venture capital investment from Skyland Ventures
November 2017
Funds raised from ANRI and 500 startups in Japan
June 2019
Funds raised US$4.1M from Spiral Ventures, DBJ Capital, J-Power, and 500 Startups, Japan
February 2021
Funds raised US$17.1M from SPARX, Daiwa Corporate Investment, The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, and EPSON X Investment / Global Brain
June 2021
GITAI has tied a joint research contract with Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) for joint R&D of a robotic arm for the “LUNAR CRUISER”
July 2021
GITAI has won a procurement contract from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)
October 2021
GITAI has completed a successful technology demonstration inside the ISS
April 2022
GITAI has conducted a successful demonstration of ISAM Activities in simulated space environment
End of 2022
Call for Round C investment
Management
Sho Nakanose
Founder&CEO
After leaving IBM, started and sold a business in India. One of the first participants from Japan in Singularity University’s flagship program, GSP. In 2016, started development of the first prototypes of the GITAI robot and founded the company.
Yuto Nakanishi (Ph. D)
CRO
Former Founder & CEO of SCHAFT. After retiring as a research associate at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Information Science and Technology (JSK Lab), he founded the bipedal robot startup, SCHAFT. He later sold the company to Google in 2013.
Toyotaka Kozuki (Ph. D)
CTO
PhD at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Information Science and Technology (JSK Lab). Former mechanical engineer of WHILL.
Ryouhei Ueda(Ph. D)
VP of software
PhD at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Information Science and Technology (JSK Lab). Former robotics software engineer of SCHAFT.