# Sakana AI

> **TL;DR.** Sakana AI is a Tokyo-based AI research lab founded in July 2023 by ex-Google Brain researchers David Ha and Llion Jones, pursuing nature-inspired methods — model merging, evolutionary optimization, and multi-agent orchestration — as an alternative to simply scaling one transformer architecture.

- **Category:** AI / Foundation Models / Japanese AI Labs
- **Stage:** established
- **Age:** 1118 days
- **Origin date:** 2023-07-01
- **First detected:** 2026-06-22
- **Canonical URL:** https://earlyterms.com/term/sakana-ai
- **Sources:** 8 primary URLs

## Definition

Sakana AI is a Tokyo-based AI research lab founded in July 2023 by ex-Google Brain researchers David Ha and Llion Jones, pursuing nature-inspired methods — model merging, evolutionary optimization, and multi-agent orchestration — as an alternative to simply scaling one transformer architecture.

Sakana closed a $135M Series B on [November 17, 2025](https://sakana.ai/series-b/) at a $2.65B valuation, then added Google, Citigroup, Salesforce Ventures, and Mitsubishi Electric as strategic backers through early 2026, becoming Japan's most valuable AI startup while shipping [Sakana Fugu](https://sakana.ai/fugu-release/), a multi-model orchestration system, on June 22, 2026.

## Analogy

Think of Sakana AI as an AI lab that breeds champion racehorses by crossing existing bloodlines, rather than raising one bigger horse from scratch.

## Why it's emerging now

Sakana AI's Series B extension pulled in Google, Citigroup, and Salesforce Ventures as strategic investors through early 2026, and its CTO Llion Jones — a co-author of the original Transformer paper — went public saying he's "absolutely sick" of the architecture he helped create, right as the lab shipped its Sakana Fugu orchestration model.

## Related terms

- *child:* Sakana Fugu
- *related:* David Ha
- *related:* Llion Jones
- *child:* AI Scientist
- *competitor:* Kimi AI
- *competitor:* DeepSeek V4 Pro
- *competitor:* Qwen3.6
- *competitor:* GLM-5.1
- *related:* Managed Agents
- *related:* Agent Harness
- *related:* Sovereign AI

## Sources

1. [Sakana AI — company info](https://sakana.ai/company-info/)
2. [Wikipedia — Sakana AI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakana_AI)
3. [Sakana AI — Announcing Our Series B](https://sakana.ai/series-b/)
4. [TechCrunch — Sakana AI raises $135M Series B at a $2.65B valuation](https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/17/sakana-ai-raises-135m-series-b-at-a-2-65b-valuation-to-continue-building-ai-models-for-japan)
5. [Sakana AI — Strategic Partnership with Google](https://sakana.ai/google/#en)
6. [VentureBeat — Sakana AI's CTO says he's 'sick' of transformers](https://venturebeat.com/ai/sakana-ais-cto-says-hes-absolutely-sick-of-transformers-the-tech-that-powers)
7. [Sakana AI — Sakana Fugu release](https://sakana.ai/fugu-release/)
8. [GitHub — SakanaAI/AI-Scientist](https://github.com/SakanaAI/AI-Scientist)

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_Generated by EarlyTerms · https://earlyterms.com/term/sakana-ai_