Conditions for Tokyo to Become a Global Startup Hub | A Serious Comparison with Singapore, San Francisco, and London [SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026]

Hello, this is Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.

"A global hub doesn't have to be Silicon Valley 2.0"—a single comment from Aki Jain of Alumni Ventures during this session set the frame for the entire discussion[^1].

The "Role of Tokyo as a Global Hub" session at SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 featured Christine Tsai, founding partner of 500 Global, Masayuki Kimura, CEO of SOA Holdings/Venture Client, and Ryuji Doi, Head of AI Transformation at Mizuho Financial Group. Aki Jain of Alumni Ventures served as moderator[^3]. It was a venue where top-tier figures from US-Japan finance, VC, and operating companies spoke candidly about Tokyo's current standing.

In my role at TIMEWELL, I think every day about how Tokyo positions itself within the global startup ecosystem. Singapore, San Francisco, London—when you seriously compare these cities with Tokyo, what is in place and what is missing? This session provided powerful supporting evidence for my own hypotheses.

What was unusual about the panel was how directly the speakers compared Tokyo against specific rival hubs. Most public discussions of Japanese startup policy stay abstract—"Japan must become more globally competitive"—without naming names or specifying axes. Here, Tsai talked plainly about San Francisco's exit pipeline, Kimura about Singapore's velocity of institutional design, Doi about how Mizuho needs to operate at the speed of London-based fintechs, and Aki Jain about Tokyo's quality-of-life advantage versus the Bay Area. That kind of pointed comparison is exactly the discipline Japan's hub conversation needs.

SusHi Tech as the source of "Tokyo hub thesis"

SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026, running from April 27 to 29, 2026 at Tokyo Big Sight, is one of Asia's largest global innovation conferences. In its fourth year, total attendance has surpassed 400,000 and business meetings have exceeded 6,000—a record over last year. Far more than an exhibition, it is establishing itself as a hub function for the global ecosystem.

Particularly this year, the G-NETS (Global Network of Tokyo Summit) mayoral-level meeting is being held in parallel, putting the foundation in place for Tokyo to function as an international startup hub. This session was an important venue for putting that momentum into words.

Tokyo Innovation Base (TIB), operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, has also rapidly increased its presence over the past year or two. Headquartered in Yurakucho, it serves as a base for overseas startups landing in Japan and Japanese startups expanding globally—supporting traffic in both directions. Together with SusHi Tech, I sense that Tokyo is evolving from "merely the host city" to a "permanent hub function."

The Yurakucho location is more strategically chosen than it might appear. Within a fifteen-minute walk you reach the Imperial Palace business district, the Marunouchi cluster of large enterprises, the Ginza retail and consumer-test environment, and Tokyo Station's Shinkansen access to the rest of the country. For an overseas founder landing in Tokyo for the first time, that geographic compression is precisely what they need—major-customer meetings, a quiet co-working desk, and a regional pilot site reachable in the same week. Singapore has CapitaSpring; London has Old Street; Paris has Station F. Tokyo's answer is taking shape at TIB.

"Tokyo's evolution" by the numbers

The numbers shared in the session were highly persuasive. Tokyo's startup investment has grown more than tenfold over the past 15 years. Twenty to thirty CVCs (Corporate Venture Capital arms) are launched each year—a world-leading pace. 500 Global has invested in over 3,000 companies across more than 80 countries over 16 years, with Sakana AI as a recent major deal[^2]. Money Forward has reached JPY 60 billion in revenue and a JPY 300 billion market cap. Uniqlo grew from JPY 70 billion in revenue and a JPY 30 billion market cap in 1998 to today's JPY 2.5 trillion in revenue and over JPY 20 trillion in market cap (third in Japan).

The fact that the annual rate of CVC launches is among the highest in the world is a number rarely cited. It is proof that large enterprises are seriously committing to open innovation, and that is fair to call a uniquely Japanese strength.

Compared with Singapore and London, the high CVC ratio stands out. Singapore is led by sovereign-wealth and government-backed funds (Temasek, GIC); London is centered on major financial institutions and independent VCs. Tokyo, on top of these, has a thick layer of operating-company CVCs—a multi-layered structure that contributes to long-term ecosystem stability.

Christine Tsai of 500 Global — Five conditions for a global hub

Drawing on 16 years of experience at 500 Global, Tsai distilled the conditions for a startup ecosystem into five elements. First, talent (the founder layer); second, capital (staged from seed through growth); third, a healthy exit environment; fourth, a customer base (where meaningful in-market growth is possible); and fifth, an inflow of external capital and talent.

Looking at Tokyo through these five elements, "capital" and "customer base" rate strongly, "external inflows" are improving, and "exit environment" and "talent layer" are still developing. In particular, invigorating the exit environment (IPOs and large M&A) is a future challenge I would also agree with.

The differences in evaluation axes become clearer when compared with Singapore and San Francisco. San Francisco is overwhelmingly strong on "talent" and "external inflows"; Singapore on "external inflows" and "capital (government-backed)"; London on "financial-services customer base" and "English-speaking networks." Tokyo positions itself as a city that competes on "a massive domestic customer base" and "the depth of operating companies."

Kimura's observations — How things differ from 15 years ago

Masayuki Kimura of SOA Holdings/Venture Client described Tokyo's evolution over 15 years in vivid terms. "Fifteen years ago, the only participants were startup entrepreneurs—almost no VCs or financial institutions. Today, diverse stakeholders, global and international ecosystem players, are joining, and investment volumes have grown more than tenfold."

What Kimura particularly emphasized was that the annual rate of CVC launches is at world-leading levels. This is an important metric showing that large companies are seriously entering open innovation.

Collaboration with Palantir — A JPY 10 billion-scale operational improvement

The concrete example Kimura cited was a collaboration with Palantir. Sparked by a VC introduction, the partnership reportedly delivered JPY 10 billion-scale operational efficiency and product improvements. Using data analysis and augmentation technology, they are building a decision-making platform on top of data extracted from disparate internal and external systems.

"Japanese large enterprises have leveraged startup technology to deliver JPY 10 billion-scale impact"—this is no longer an isolated, exceptional case but is being discussed as an everyday example.

I see this firsthand in TIMEWELL's WARP engagements with large enterprises as well. Five years ago, large-enterprise open innovation was routinely criticized for "ending in pilots" and "never reaching production." As of 2026, full deployments and tens-of-billions-yen impacts are now talked about as ordinary outcomes. Both startup-side maturity and large-enterprise decision-making improvements have advanced—both, in concert, drove this shift.

Ryuji Doi — Mizuho's AI transformation thesis

Ryuji Doi of Mizuho Financial Group opened with the premise that "we are fundamentally a business company, not a technology company", then laid out a "build vs. buy" decision framework. The criteria for prioritizing buy: ROI, level of productization, internal operational cost. Build is considered only when deep customization is required. The premise, he stressed, is that AI coding tools (Cursor, Cognition, Codeium, etc.) have dramatically lowered build costs.

The concept of a "two-speed architecture" Doi pointed to was particularly interesting: pursuing short-term improvements to legacy systems in parallel with the long-term introduction of new AI-native processes. In industries with heavy regulation and deep legacy, like banking, this two-pronged approach is the realistic answer.

Doi also said that, when speaking with startups, he wants to hear "not the current technology trend, but your future vision." And: "We want to hear not the technology a startup possesses, but how you can transform us into an AI-native company." This stance reflects maturity on the large-enterprise side.

Tsai's point — Preemptive investment in AI-first

From an investor's perspective, Tsai cited the cases of Canva and Intercom. Canva began investing in AI ten years ago and reportedly now has the third-most-used AI product after OpenAI and Claude. Intercom likewise pivoted to AI-native and is now in the phase where AI product growth is outpacing the parent business.

"Incumbents that invest preemptively in AI will not lose to AI-native startups"—this is an important point. I sense that the timing for this preemptive investment has now arrived for Japan's large enterprises as well.

The strategic question for Japanese boards is no longer "should we invest in AI?" It is "are we investing at a pace that compounds over the next five years, or are we still treating AI as a series of one-off experiments?" Canva's lead came not from any single decision but from a decade of compounding bets—training data, internal tooling, talent acquisition, model partnerships—that put them in a position to ship AI features the moment the market was ready. Japanese incumbents who treat 2026 as the year to begin compounding will look very different in 2031 from those who treat it as the year to commission another study.

Aki Jain's insight — Tokyo can be its "own kind of hub"

The perspective offered by moderator Aki Jain was the most thought-provoking for me.

"A global hub doesn't have to be Silicon Valley 2.0. Tokyo can be its own kind of hub."

What are Tokyo's distinctive strengths? Precision engineering and manufacturing capability (among the world's best), globally competitive IP and content (anime, games, food culture), hospitality, service quality, and infrastructure (top-class globally), and a labor shortage and aging society (functioning as an innovation driver)—these four.

Aki's remark that "Tokyo is an entrepreneur-friendly city where you can get the best ramen even late at night" was humorous yet on point. In fact, many overseas founders feel Tokyo offers an overwhelmingly higher quality of life than Silicon Valley or New York. Safety, cleanliness, public transit, food diversity, stable prices—these factors are precisely what make a city one where talented people want to live long-term.

Comparison with San Francisco and London

Let's compare with the numbers as well. San Francisco has world-leading rents and prices and a serious deterioration in public safety. Since Brexit, London has seen the inflow of European talent stall, with housing costs also rising. Tokyo, meanwhile, remains stable in cost of living among major metropolises and is top-class in safety and public infrastructure.

This factor of "quality of life" has not been heavily emphasized in startup-ecosystem discussions to date. Yet it is a critical variable in whether top talent stays long-term. The unceasing flow of talent from San Francisco to Tokyo, Singapore, and Lisbon is precisely because of this.

Comparison with Singapore — Differences in institutional design

Singapore is a striking case worldwide—it established its global-hub position in just twenty years. Substantial tax incentives for tech firms, simple founder visa and residency systems, English as an official language, and government-led acceleration—Singapore mobilized all of these to draw in overseas founders.

What Tokyo should learn from Singapore is the velocity of institutional design. Reforms to Japan's "Business Manager visa," including capital requirements, were debated in 2025, but the direction is still different from Singapore's EntrePass, which is "designed from the start to welcome overseas founders." "Easy to come, easy to stay, easy to grow"—across all three stages, Singapore has been institutionally prepared.

That said, Singapore has weaknesses too. Its domestic market is small (population around 5.8 million) and its cluster of operating companies is thin. While excellent as a hub for setting up Asia-region headquarters, for serious B2C business validation or deep collaboration with large enterprises, Tokyo holds an overwhelming advantage.

In other words, Tokyo and Singapore can have a "complementary," not "zero-sum," relationship. Setting up Asia headquarters in Singapore while doing deep work on the Japanese market and large-enterprise partnerships in Tokyo—this kind of hub specialization should become the new standard.

It is also worth noting where Singapore's playbook does not directly translate. Singapore could rebuild its institutional design from a relatively clean slate; Tokyo cannot. Japan's labor law, immigration framework, tax code, and social-insurance system are products of decades of accumulated case law and political compromise. The realistic Japanese path is incremental—targeted special economic zones, opt-in English-language administrative pilots, founder-specific visa categories—rather than wholesale system replacement. The good news is that incremental change, applied consistently over a decade, produces compound results that are very hard to reverse.

My takeaway — Tokyo's right answer is a "specialized hub"

As I listened to the session, I felt strongly: Tokyo should aim not for an "all-purpose hub" but for a "specialized hub."

Tsai cited healthcare, physical AI, and hospitality as "domains where Japan has unique strengths." These are areas where Japan has uniquely defensible advantages that Silicon Valley or Beijing cannot easily match. Physical AI benefits from Japan's manufacturing depth and the implementation environment for autonomous driving and commercial robots. Healthcare benefits from leading the way on aging, mature healthcare systems, and a world-leading medical-device industry. Hospitality benefits from the world's highest level of service culture and a diverse base of visitors.

By strategically concentrating resources on these three domains, I believe Tokyo can become a specialized hub that the world recognizes as "the place to be for these areas."

Japan lacks "big dreams"

The challenge Kimura pointed out frankly was the most painful. "Japanese founders, out of a sense of responsibility, pitch 'achievable market sizes.' But global investors expect 'oversized visions.'"

This gap is culturally deep. Japanese culture values "responsible speech," so there is psychological resistance to executives speaking grandly of dreams. But building a global company requires a grand dream from day one.

I felt anew that TIMEWELL, too, has a role to play in granting permission to dream big to the intrapreneurs and new-business leaders we support through "the democratization of challenge." The humility that is a Japanese virtue works against you in investor presentations. The "ability to switch register depending on time, place, and occasion" is the final piece required of Japanese founders who win globally.

What Mizuho's "AI-native" transformation requires of startups

The most important point in Doi's remarks was his message that "startups should come with deep understanding of the industry and business processes." Japan's three megabanks each have different cultures and processes. Generic technology proposals will not move large enterprises. The era requires transformation proposals based on industry understanding.

For startups, this is also good news. Industry-specialist startups will have an easier time delivering results in large-enterprise partnerships. The "wide and shallow" era is over.

This shift also has implications for how founders should hire in their first eighteen months. Two years ago, the dominant advice was "hire generalists who can ship anything." Today, with AI dramatically accelerating engineering throughput, the binding constraint for industry-focused startups has moved upstream—to people who can sit across the table from a regulated bank, a manufacturer, or a hospital and translate their domain logic into product specs. Founding teams that understand this and hire one or two senior domain experts early will close enterprise deals that pure-engineer teams cannot reach.

Conditions for "more overseas founders living in Tokyo"

For Tokyo to function as a global hub, we must put in place the conditions that make overseas founders want to live in Tokyo. Four points came up in the session: expanding startup visas, building English-language administrative procedures, expanding international school capacity for founders' children, and simplifying corporate setup.

The international school capacity issue is particularly serious. Tokyo's international schools have limited capacity, and there are real cases where overseas founders' families would like to relocate but cannot secure a school for their children. "Not just the founders themselves, but their families being able to live comfortably"—this is the next layer of challenges.

In addition, rising housing costs cannot be ignored. From 2024 through 2026, central Tokyo condominium prices have surged. For overseas founders, the inversion in some areas where "Tokyo is now more expensive than Singapore" is already happening. This is a trend Tokyo, which has historically leaned on "cost-of-living advantages," must watch with caution.

Collaboration between startups and regional municipalities

Another point not to miss is the collaboration between Tokyo and the regions. Startups tend to concentrate in Tokyo, but in many cases proof-of-concept fields are easier to access in the regions. Fukuoka, Osaka, Kobe, Sapporo, Sendai—each has its own startup-support programs.

For Tokyo to function as a hub means a structure of "Tokyo connecting the regions and startups," not "everything concentrated in Tokyo." Regional proof-of-concept fields, Tokyo's capital and talent, and global perspectives from overseas—when this triangle works, the competitiveness of Japan as a whole rises.

I have had more conversations recently with municipal startup-support officials in Fukuoka, Kobe, and Osaka, and each city is starting to consciously adopt a "go through Tokyo to connect with the world" model rather than "compete with Tokyo." This is a healthy shift. Just as Singapore functions as Southeast Asia's hub, Tokyo should function as Japan's national hub.

Conclusion — Five actions that will determine Tokyo's next decade

Five actions for Tokyo to become a true global hub, taken away from this session: First, building the exit environment (increasing the number of unicorns and the volume of IPOs/M&A). Second, expanding private-sector capital providers (depth of institutional investors at Series A and B). Third, preemptive AI investment by large enterprises (the Canva-style "commitment to AI"). Fourth, a culture of grand vision among founders (setting dreams beyond a sense of responsibility). And fifth, an industry-focused strategy (concentrating on physical AI, healthcare, and hospitality).

Beyond this, the institutional, tax, and housing challenges to attracting overseas founders should also see significant movement over this decade. Reforms to the Business Manager visa, further expansion of Tokyo Innovation Base, expansion of international school capacity, and well-designed tax incentives—when these come together, Tokyo will become, in name and reality, a "specialized global hub" alongside Singapore, San Francisco, and London.

I believe TIMEWELL can contribute in some form to at least half of these five actions. To "build infrastructure for challenge" is to stack up solutions that resolve these structural issues one by one. As I listened to the dialogue between Tsai, Kimura, and Doi at the SusHi Tech venue, my own to-do list became clearer once again. The day Tokyo establishes itself as "the world's specialized hub" ten years from now—we can only pull that day forward through the daily accumulation of practical work. That was the conviction I left this hour with.

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[^1]: YouTube. "The Role of Tokyo as a Global Hub in Accelerating Startup Growth." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCplpAzCu6w [^2]: 500 Global. https://500.co/ [^3]: Alumni Ventures. https://www.av.vc/