TL;DR
- Sakana AI establishes a comprehensive multiyear partnership agreement with MUFG Bank
- Sakana AI developing bank-specific AI systems to embrace banking industry transformation
- Sakana AI Co-founder and COO Ren Ito retained as advisor to MUFG
Summary
Sakana AI is excited to announce that we have signed a comprehensive multi-year partnership agreement with MUFG Bank, the largest bank in Japan. Sakana AI will develop and deliver AI specialized for banking business, aiming to revolutionize the banking industry itself.
With recent advances in AI capabilities, MUFG Bank is committed to embracing data-driven management to enhance customer value and productivity by strengthening its AI and data infrastructure.
This partnership represents the largest-scoped, unprecedented digital transformation initiative to date, spearheaded by MUFG Bank’s senior management, with a grand vision of an “AI-native” transformation of the entire bank.
In addition, our co-founder and COO, Ren Ito, has been retained as an advisor to MUFG Bank. As the Bank’s advisor, receiving the full support of MUFG Bank’s senior leadership, Sakana AI can confidently deliver MUFG Bank’s AI transformation internally and externally, with all parties aligned with MUFG Bank’s grand vision.
Sakana AI’s mission is to develop frontier AI technology for Japan. Over the past several months, we have been in dialogue with leading companies in Japan spanning various industries, with a strong focus in the financial industry.
We are very pleased to have established a close relationship with MUFG Bank, the leading bank in Japan, to tackle the grand challenge of transforming the banking industry. MUFG Bank, which has its roots from the 1870s, as Japan started to industrialize, has served the nation for a century and a half.
In the ever-evolving, fast-changing, AI field, Sakana AI is delivering agile, robust, AI-enabled technology to the Bank; technology which also aims to withstand the test of time.
Right: Hironori Kamezawa, President & Group CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. (MUFG), and Left: Ren Ito, COO of Sakana AI, Inc.
Background
Sakana AI has been at the frontier of AI innovation since its inception in 2023, and in August 2024, it launched The AI Scientist, the first agentic system which automates the scientific research process. It has made great strides, with papers generated by its improved version, AI Scientist-v2, passing peer review at workshops of top AI international conferences.
Sakana AI’s primary mission is to contribute to solving social issues in Japan. While AI alone will certainly not solve all of Japan’s problems, we believe AI can help! In March 2025, we established the Business Development Division to create a system to steadily link the research results represented by agentic systems such as The AI Scientist to business innovation. Sakana AI has been in dialogue with Japanese financial institutions for the past six months to deepen our understanding of their operations and challenges, and began developing finance-specific AI this year.
Comprehensive Partnership with MUFG Bank for the Next 3 Years
We have just signed a three-year partnership agreement with MUFG Bank. Initially, we are currently deploying AI-enabled internal workflows to support the bank’s decision-making processes in line with its business objectives. Over time, our shared vision with MUFG Bank is to proceed with full-scale implementation of the AI-enabled solutions in enterprise systems for the bank, as well as to expand the scope of application of the AI-agentic technology to other business domains.
Ren Ito’s Role as Advisor to MUFG Bank
As part of this multiyear partnership agreement, Ren Ito, co-founder and COO of Sakana AI, will assume the role of AI advisor to MUFG. Ito will advise MUFG on its AI implementation strategy, and lead innovation in the financial AI field together.
“We are very pleased to announce that we have entered into a multi-year strategic technology partnership with Sakana AI and have retained Mr. Ren Ito as MUFG's AI advisor. The utilization of AI is a cornerstone of MUFG's medium-term management plan, and through this partnership, we aim to further refine our AI strategy. By implementing the innovative technologies provided by Sakana AI, we will work on automating processes that require complex thinking and advanced expertise, thereby creating high-value management impacts. Ultimately, we hope this will contribute to Japan's economic development and the resolution of global social issues.”
Mr. Hironori Kamezawa, President & Group CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc.
“We are very pleased to be able to directly connect the cutting-edge AI technology we have developed with MUFG Bank, a leading company in Japan, to solve their problems. We are very pleased to be working with MUFG to take on the meaningful challenge of transforming finance, a fundamental area of society, through AI.”
Ren Ito, Co-founder and COO of Sakana AI
Sakana AI
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