Italy's Deep Tech Showcased the "Human Edge" | Where Design, Craftsmanship, and Frontier Technology Intersect for Next-Generation Innovation [SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026]

Hello, this is Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.

"Deep Tech with a Human Edge"—the title of this session was the single thread running through nine consecutive pitches. On Italy Day at SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026, John Paolo Bruno from the Italian Trade Agency (ICE) Tokyo office hosted nine Italian deep tech startups, each delivering rapid-fire pitches[^1].

To be honest, I didn't know much about Italy's startup ecosystem before this session. Fashion, food, design—these were the strengths I associated with the country. But over the course of ninety minutes, I came to a strong realization: Italy has carved out a distinctive position in Europe through "human-centered deep tech".

And it dawned on me that this is Italy's own answer to the question of how to commercialize "the human edge that AI cannot replace." Design, craftsmanship, and frontier technology. The answer to differentiation in the AI era lies precisely at the intersection of these three—that was the impression this session left me with.

What also struck me was how deliberately the nine companies avoided the "we are the next OpenAI" framing common to American pitch culture. Instead, each speaker rooted their technology in a particular human protagonist—an inspector, an energy consumer, a doctor, a patient, a journalist. In an investment climate where AI hype tends to dominate, this discipline of human anchoring felt almost radical. It is also, I suspect, the reason Italian deep tech is starting to attract the attention of conservative Japanese corporates that have grown wary of pure technology plays.

SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 as a stage for "national pitch sessions"

SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 is being held at Tokyo Big Sight from April 27 to 29, 2026. With a record 770 startups participating, the event hosts multiple national pavilions and country-specific pitch sessions every year[^3]. This year's Italy session, curated by ICE, was the perfect venue for nine startups to showcase their plans for entering the Japanese market.

The "democratization of challenge" that TIMEWELL champions should, I believe, transcend borders. Witnessing the moment Italian startups stepped into the Japanese market was a valuable experience. In recent years, the Italian government has strengthened its "National Startup Act," steadily increasing the national budget for deep tech support. 2026 feels like the phase in which those efforts are beginning to bear fruit on the world stage[^2].

It is worth pausing on how unusual a national-pitch format actually is for Japan. Five years ago, country pavilions at Japanese conferences typically functioned as static display booths—pamphlets in English, a few business cards exchanged, little follow-through. SusHi Tech has reframed pavilions as stage productions: a curated lineup of nine companies, a clearly defined theme ("Deep Tech with a Human Edge"), a host who keeps the conversation moving, and an immediate path from stage to booth to introductions. The Italian Pavilion this year is one of the cleanest executions of that new format I have seen, and I expect other countries to study it carefully.

Nine pitches — A cross-section of human-centered deep tech

Let me walk through the nine pitches in order. Each company shared the common thread of "human-centeredness" while presenting deep tech across very different domains.

Takeover — Sending robots into hazardous environments

The first to pitch was Takeover, a geospatial sensing company specializing in inspections of tunnels, underground facilities, and industrial plants. They acquire high-precision 3D data using LiDAR and laser scanning.

What caught my attention was their proprietary autonomous flight drone, "Maria." It is reportedly capable of fully autonomous inspections even in GPS-denied environments. Underground tunnels, mountainous terrain, the interiors of industrial plants—drones go to the places "too dangerous for humans." Protecting humans from danger is the very purpose of deep tech—the philosophy of "Human Edge" was on full display. Takeover already has a base in Tokyo and is reportedly planning pilot projects with Japanese infrastructure operators.

Demlabs Lab — Remote monitoring across construction, undersea, and infrastructure

Demlabs Lab deploys remote-monitoring AI for the very different sites of construction, infrastructure, and undersea works. Already adopted in 25 countries, the company is currently working with Takeda Construction, a major shipbuilding firm, and a financial group in Japan.

What I found compelling was their proprietary privacy-aware AR technology. By automatically blurring people, vehicles, and zones within imagery, they comply with regulations like GDPR while still enabling safety alerts and monitoring of human-machine interaction. This is a great example of deep tech that simultaneously solves technical and regulatory problems.

Koala — Energy should belong to the people

The most energetic pitch of the session, in my view, came from Koala, an energy-trading platform. Beginning with the mission "energy should belong to the people," their pitch carried the intensity of a social movement, not just a tech startup.

Their market sizing was striking. Europe has 300 million consumers, 50 million producers, and a total energy market of EUR 95 trillion. Yet consumers can neither know where their energy comes from nor how its price is set, let alone intervene in the process.

Koala addresses this through six modules: Share (local energy communities, free), Pro (professional tools), Trade (P2P energy trading), Flex, Crowd, and Mate. Within a year of their 2025 MVP launch, they reached 6,000 members and EUR 750,000 in initial revenue, targeting 15 million users and EUR 500 million annually within ten years.

Listening to this pitch, I felt strongly that this was an applied form of "the democratization of challenge"—the democratization of energy. An infrastructure for ordinary citizens to reclaim decision-making once monopolized by big corporations and governments. The root of the idea is the same as the infrastructure TIMEWELL is building for challengers.

Luna — Brand visibility in the LLM era

Luna is software that makes brands visible across LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity. This is a domain you might call next-generation SEO, with the market projected to reach USD 500 million by 2033.

In an era where users obtain information from LLMs rather than search engines, how will companies be discovered? It's an important question. Luna audits websites, analyzes how a brand is mentioned within LLMs, and provides actionable recommendations to improve rankings. It is a pioneer in the new domain of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). From this pitch, I felt strongly that the entire traditional SEO industry will be reorganized around LLM compatibility over the next several years.

Electa — Financial AI for Japan's three million companies

Electa's pitch was unmistakably aimed at the Japanese market. They presented an estimate that Japan has 3 million companies, with annual losses of approximately JPY 12 trillion due to insufficient AI adoption. Seventy percent of these companies cannot afford specialized analysts or complex software—a structural problem they aim to solve with a financial forecasting AI usable after a five-minute setup.

These numbers align with what I see daily in TIMEWELL's work. Mid-sized and small companies in Japan suffer from a desperate shortage of analytical resources. Now that AI has become commoditized, I believe the platforms that close this gap have an extremely high chance of delivering "non-linear productivity gains."

Atlas — Ultrasound x AI transforming preventive medicine

In the medical domain, Atlas stood out the most. They opened with a grand narrative: translating into technology the longevity secrets of Sardinia's "Blue Zone" (a region with one of the world's highest life expectancies).

The numbers were intense. Statistically, one in three people will face cancer, and 55 million people live with dementia. In Japan, those aged 65 and over make up 29 percent of the population, and 40 percent of cancers are detected late.

Atlas's first product, "AD," uses real-time ultrasound analysis to improve positive case detection by 23 percent and accelerate diagnosis by 3x. Their second project, "Quantum Twin," builds a living digital model for each patient and combines AI with quantum computing to predict diseases two to five years before clinical symptoms emerge.

This is a paradigm shift in preventive medicine. The domain medicine has long dreamed of—"intervening before the disease takes hold"—now feels technologically within reach.

Icarus — Saving healthcare facilities from the phone

Another medical-sector startup, Icarus, tackles an extremely practical problem. Healthcare facilities reportedly lose 25 percent of their day to phone handling. Their Jenny AI assistant structures the entire phone-call flow and handles up to ten simultaneous calls.

In just three months, they have acquired 15 paying clients (in Italy, Spain, and Japan), with market scalability above 18 million. Freeing healthcare staff from phone duty so they can focus on patient care is a quiet but reliably valuable product on the front lines of medicine.

Every Day — Authenticated news content

Every Day positions itself as the first authenticated news content ecosystem. As deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation erode trust in institutions and media, they are building a system to authenticate "who filmed and posted what." They have already partnered with the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.

Information authenticity is a fundamental challenge of the AI era. A layer that combines blockchain and cryptographic authentication to guarantee "genuine content" will be needed by every type of media going forward.

Digitara — Won the full digital twin of the City of Turin in 2022

Digitara, founded in 2004, specializes in geospatial and 3D digital twins. They won the full digital twin contract for the City of Turin in 2022 and currently employ 550 specialists. MMS (Mobile Mapping System), street gradient data, asset information—they provide serious digital twin infrastructure for municipal government.

Bruno's intent — Italy x Japan demand-driven matchmaking

After the session, ICE's Bruno emphasized that "we want to create concrete matching opportunities at this venue with Japanese large enterprises, municipalities, and research institutions." This speaks to SusHi Tech's function as a deal-making platform tied to real demand, not just a showcase.

I walked around the Italian company booths in the venue. At every booth, product demos were unfolding in English and Italian with Japanese business professionals. "Met at SusHi Tech" is becoming a standard opening phrase for new Japan-Europe business launches—I felt that shift firsthand.

This change cannot be ignored. Until now, European startups looking to enter the Japanese market often approached Japanese VCs via London or Berlin. Through SusHi Tech, a single event, they can now meet Japanese operating companies, municipalities, and research institutions directly. The lead time for deal origination is being shortened by months.

My takeaway — "Human-centered" as an axis of differentiation

After listening to all nine pitches, here's how I framed it: "Italian deep tech possesses both the abstraction of technology and a human narrative."

US deep tech is often discussed in abstract terms like "10x improvement" and "scale advantages." In contrast, today's Italian companies almost universally framed their pitches around "solving this specific human problem" with concrete human protagonists. Takeover protects inspectors in dangerous sites, Koala restores sovereignty to energy consumers, Atlas turns the longevity wisdom of Blue Zones into technology, and Icarus frees healthcare staff from answering phones.

Pitch designs that "start from the human problem" should also serve as a reference for Japanese startups. Japanese pitches tend to lead with "the impressiveness of the technology," but investors and customers want to know first "whose problem you are solving."

The trinity of "design x craftsmanship x frontier technology"

I dug a layer deeper into why Italy occupies this distinctive position globally. My hypothesis is that Italy's strength is precisely the trinity of "design x craftsmanship x frontier technology."

Ferrari, Brembo, Lavazza—these heritage brands aren't merely luxury labels; they internalize frontier technology. Ferrari brings its F1-honed aerodynamics and materials engineering down into production cars; Brembo applies AI simulation to brake disc design; Lavazza uses IoT to optimize coffee bean supply chains.

Meanwhile, younger startups like Atlas combine "wisdom rooted in the land," like the Blue Zone, with cutting-edge AI and quantum technology. Digitara, too, fuses Turin's urban history with modern digital twin technology.

"Technology alone won't win, culture alone won't win—you must weave them together"—this is Italian-style deep tech. I see it as an extremely practical answer to how to preserve "the human edge" in the AI era.

This trinity also explains why Italian companies tend to win in categories where pure software-led competitors struggle—premium kitchen equipment, luxury automotive components, artisanal coffee, high-end leather goods. In each of these categories, the customer is paying not only for function but for a story of provenance, taste, and human judgment. Once frontier technology is folded into that story, rather than placed in opposition to it, you get products that are both differentiated and difficult to copy. Spec sheets can be matched; lineage cannot.

Japan-Italy complementarity

The complementarity between Japan and Italy that I felt during this session was striking. Japan's strengths are precision manufacturing, leading the world in aging-market dynamics, and infrastructure maturity. Italy's strengths are human-centered design, aesthetic sensibility, and scalable deep tech. Combining these two holds significant potential for Japanese companies.

Japanese hospitals adopting Atlas, Japanese infrastructure operators using Takeover's drones, mid-sized Japanese companies deploying Electa's financial AI—these specific use cases should emerge starting from SusHi Tech.

The reverse direction is equally viable. Kyoto's heritage businesses, Tsubame-Sanjo's metalworking, Arita ware, Wajima lacquerware—Japan, too, has countless examples of "craftsmanship rooted in the land." Multiplying these by frontier technology and reaching global markets should accelerate over the next decade. By moving beyond "simple DX" to a perspective of "technology that amplifies craftsmanship," competitive advantages that AI cannot replace begin to come into view.

Implications for Japan's heritage businesses and regional industries

As I listened to this session, implications for Japan's heritage companies and regional startups began to surface in my mind one after another.

First is the idea of "translating history into technology." Just as Atlas translated Blue Zone longevity wisdom into quantum technology, Japanese heritage brands too can technologize their "tacit knowledge." For example, a long-established Kyoto restaurant could turn its dashi-making process into sensor data and provide it to restaurants worldwide. It may sound far-fetched, but as of 2026 this is technically entirely feasible.

Second is the dual structure of "local x global." Koala supports local energy communities in Europe while targeting the EUR 95 trillion global market. Japanese regional startups, too, should design connections to global markets from day one, even as they begin from regional issues.

Third is the importance of the "human-centered narrative." One reason Japan's outstanding technology fails to reach the world, I believe, is that pitches center on "feature specs." By learning the Italian narrative style of "whose pain we solve and how," Japanese technology should win greater recognition globally.

Fourth—and this came up repeatedly in conversations after the session—is the value of "co-creation rather than wholesale import." Several Italian founders explicitly told me they were not looking for distribution agreements but for joint development partners. The unspoken premise was that the Japanese partner would contribute something irreplaceable—precision components, in-field data, regulatory expertise, customer trust—rather than simply paying licensing fees. This is a healthier basis for cross-border collaboration than the "platform plus local reseller" model that dominated the previous decade, and it suits Japan's strengths better.

Conclusion — SusHi Tech as the Japan gateway for European startups

The nine Italian companies embodied a distinctive worldview of "human-centered deep tech." After they return home, I plan to introduce several of them to potential Japanese partners. Connecting them to the corporate, university, and municipal networks TIMEWELL has built across Japan—I see this as my own version of "the international expansion of the democratization of challenge."

SusHi Tech Tokyo, as one of Asia's largest events, is becoming the Japan gateway for European startups. Over the coming years, I sense an explosion of Japan-Europe cross-border ventures, and TIMEWELL intends to expand the bridge between Japan's challengers and the world even further.

To repeat once more: the question of the AI era is "how to commercialize the human edge." The nine Italian companies offered nine concrete answers to this question. For Japan's heritage companies, regional traditional industries, and emerging startups, ninety minutes this rich in implication don't come around often.

If I had to summarize my own next moves in one sentence, it would be this: pair at least three of these nine companies with Japanese counterparts within ninety days, document the cross-border collaboration playbook openly, and use that playbook to lower the barrier for the next wave of European deep tech entering Japan. The "democratization of challenge" only becomes real when the second and third teams find their path easier than the first.

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[^1]: YouTube. "Italy: Deep Tech with a Human Edge." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggOIyNMTaoc [^2]: ICE - Italian Trade Agency. https://www.ice.it/ [^3]: SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 Official Site. https://sushitech-startup.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/