Summary: Japanet Holdings, the Japanese TV shopping company based in Nagasaki, has quadrupled its venture capital fund to $200 million after early investments through Pegasus Tech Ventures in Anthropic, xAI, SpaceX, and OpenAI generated extraordinary paper returns. Anthropic alone has appreciated from a $550 million valuation in 2021 to $380 billion in 2026. The expansion is part of a broader wave of Japanese capital flowing into AI, with SoftBank committing $41 billion to OpenAI, Japan’s government launching a $6.34 billion AI scheme, and Japanese AI infrastructure spending projected to hit $5.5 billion this year.
Japanet Holdings, the Japanese television shopping company best known for selling kitchen appliances and electronics to retirees in Nagasaki, has quadrupled its venture capital fund to $200 million after early investments in Anthropic, xAI, SpaceX, and OpenAI generated returns that made the original $50 million fund look like a rounding error. The expansion, announced on Monday, turns a five-year-old experiment in corporate venture capital into one of the more improbable success stories in AI investing: a family-run infomercial business that placed bets on frontier AI labs before most institutional investors understood what they were looking at.
The fund, launched in March 2021 with Pegasus Tech Ventures as general partner, was initially designed to connect global startups with Japanet’s operations in Nagasaki, particularly its $650 million Stadium City development. It was not designed to produce venture-scale returns on artificial intelligence companies. But the fund’s early positions in Anthropic and xAI, taken when both were valued at a fraction of their current worth, have appreciated on paper by orders of magnitude. Anthropic was valued at $550 million when it raised its Series A in May 2021. It closed a $30 billion raise in February at a $380 billion valuation and is reportedly fielding offers north of $800 billion. xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, reached a $230 billion valuation in January before being acquired by SpaceX in February as part of a combined entity valued at $1.25 trillion.
A camera shop in Nagasaki
Japanet’s path to AI investing starts with a camera shop. Akira Takata, born in Nagasaki in 1948, took over his family’s camera store and in 1986 turned it into a mail-order business. He pioneered radio shopping on NBC Nagasaki Broadcasting, then moved to television, and built Japanet Takata into Japan’s leading home shopping network. The company sells everything from air conditioners to tablet computers, primarily to an older Japanese demographic, through infomercials that emphasise simplicity and value. Revenue reached 262 billion yen, roughly $1.7 billion, in fiscal 2023. Akira retired as chief executive in 2015. His son, Akito Takata, now runs Japanet Holdings and its 13 group companies with approximately 2,000 employees.
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Under Akito, Japanet diversified into sports and regional development. The company acquired V-Varen Nagasaki, a professional football club, in 2017 and established Nagasaki Velca, a basketball club, in 2020. In October 2024, it opened Nagasaki Stadium City, a 100 billion yen complex featuring a 20,000-seat stadium, a 6,000-seat arena, a hotel, and commercial facilities. The development incorporated smart city technology in partnership with SoftBank, including AI-driven crowd management, sensor-based logistics, and a dedicated app for services. It was this project that led Japanet to Pegasus Tech Ventures and, through Pegasus, to the companies building the technology that would define the decade.
How a $50 million fund found Anthropic
Pegasus Tech Ventures, based in San Jose, California, operates what it calls a “venture capital as a service” model. Founded by Anis Uzzaman, the firm manages approximately 40 funds with roughly $2 billion in total assets, investing in about 290 startups. It has achieved 76 exits including 25 IPOs. Its corporate partners include AISIN, which expanded its own Pegasus-managed fund to $100 million in February, Denka, SEGA, Sojitz, NGK Spark Plugs, and ASUS. The model connects Japanese and Asian corporations with Silicon Valley deal flow in exchange for capital and strategic distribution partnerships.
For the Japanet fund, approximately 70% of capital has gone to US and European startups, with the remainder in Asia. Focus areas include generative AI, robotics, and space technology. Check sizes range from $100,000 to $1 million for early-stage companies and $1 million to $5 million for later rounds. Neither Japanet nor Pegasus disclosed specific investment amounts, entry valuations, or return multiples for the Anthropic and xAI positions. But the maths is not complicated. A fund that invested even $1 million in Anthropic at a $550 million valuation in 2021 would hold a position worth roughly $690 million at the current $380 billion valuation. The fund also holds positions in SpaceX and OpenAI.
“Everybody wants a piece of the Silicon Valley AI action,” Uzzaman told Bloomberg. “For the Asian corporations, it’s an opportunity to invest as well as find new technologies and innovations in aligned fields.” Akito Takata framed the expansion in characteristically modest terms: “We are excited to continue leveraging this fund to seek out the world’s latest technologies and create new value that brings more joy and enrichment to our customers’ everyday lives.”
Japan’s AI investment surge
Japanet’s fund expansion is part of a broader pattern of Japanese capital flowing into AI at an accelerating rate. SoftBank has committed $41 billion to OpenAI, lifting its stake to 11% and booking a $4.2 billion gain. Japan’s government announced a one trillion yen, $6.34 billion, five-year scheme beginning this fiscal year to back domestic AI development including foundation models. Japan’s AI infrastructure spending is projected to surpass $5.5 billion in 2026, a sevenfold increase since 2022, according to IDC. Microsoft has committed $10 billion over four years to Japanese AI infrastructure in partnership with SoftBank and Sakura Internet.
The dynamic is that Japan has capital, an aging population that makes AI-driven automation strategically necessary, and a corporate culture that is increasingly willing to invest offshore to acquire technology it cannot build domestically at the same pace. Venture capital firms are racing to deploy billions on the back of AI returns, and Japanese corporations are joining the queue. Hitachi raised a fourth fund totalling $400 million, taking its total allocation past $1 billion. Fujitsu Ventures has invested in Sakana AI and QunaSys. The Japanet fund is smaller than these, but its returns relative to its size may be among the most striking.
The valuation question
The returns that justified the fund expansion are, for now, entirely on paper. Anthropic is private. xAI was absorbed into SpaceX, also private. OpenAI is expected to file for an IPO in the second half of this year but has not yet done so. The positions are illiquid, the valuations are set by the last funding round rather than by public market trading, and the history of venture capital contains no shortage of investments that looked transformative on paper until they were not. Not all AI bets pay off: Builder.ai, backed by Microsoft and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, collapsed into bankruptcy despite raising hundreds of millions.
But the concentration of value in frontier AI companies is also unlike anything venture capital has produced before. Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI are collectively valued at over $2 trillion. AI companies are commanding unprecedented valuations that some of their own investors question, yet each successive funding round prices them higher. Institutional heavyweights including Sequoia, which broke its own convention against backing competitors to invest in Anthropic alongside its existing OpenAI position, are treating these companies as generational assets rather than conventional startups.
For Japanet, the question is what a $200 million fund can do that a $50 million fund could not. The answer, given the trajectory of AI valuations, may be less about finding the next Anthropic than about the size of the position it can take when it does. The Japanet fund’s original mandate was to bring global technology to a stadium in Nagasaki. Its actual achievement was getting into the companies building general-purpose artificial intelligence before most of the world’s largest investors understood what that meant. A family that went from cameras to infomercials to football clubs to frontier AI is, if nothing else, evidence that the returns in this market have been large enough to rewrite any investor’s identity.
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