Japan's biggest firms recycle cash piles into tech start-ups

Corporate-backed VCs deploy record investment into Japanese startups, hope to spawn Unicorns

Tokyo-based aggregation app SmartNews raised $28 million in August, an effort led by the investment arm of Japan Post.

WATARU SUZUKI, Nikkei staff writer

September 24, 2019 15:44 JST

TOKYO -- Record levels of venture capital investment in Japan suggest that some of the nation's biggest companies are increasingly deploying some of their massive cash reserves into the country's fledgling tech start-up sector in a quest to create billion dollar tech "Unicorns".