NTT, entrepreneur and venture investor Young Sohn, SK (South Korea), Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), and the Development Bank of Japan have established  “IOWN AI Fund,” an investment fund aiming to build the IOWN ecosystem and create new businesses through investment in cutting-edge technologies for the AI ​​era.

In conjunction with the establishment of the investment fund, “Catalight Capital Co., Ltd.” has been established as a fund management company based in Silicon Valley and Tokyo. Under a global management structure, it will promote the discovery and growth support of promising startups.

NTT President Akira Shimada stated, “The role of IOWN, which integrates networks, computing, and power, is becoming increasingly important, and related technologies, including optoelectronic integration, are becoming a growth area that will play a central role in next-generation AI infrastructure”.

This is because the use of AI is expanding beyond large-scale model training and general-purpose business applications to include specialized and core business tasks within companies, as well as the realm of physical AI such as AI agents and robots. Amidst these changes, the way AI is used is shifting from learning-centric to inference-centric. As inference becomes more localized, real-time, and tailored to individual tasks, the requirements for AI infrastructure will change significantly.

Specifically, a distributed AI platform will be necessary, and connectivity to connect AIs will become essential. In other words, there will be a strong demand for “distributed optical AI data centers” that connect data centers via optical networks and can efficiently and flexibly utilize computing resources.

NTT is seizing this trend and is advancing research, development, and manufacturing of core technologies, including optoelectronic integration devices. Furthermore, they aim to build an ecosystem that includes surrounding areas, covering the entire picture.

Therefore,  “IOWN AI Fund” will invest in a wide range of layers, including photonics technologies such as optical transmission, semiconductors for AI, optical devices such as lasers, control of distributed AI infrastructure, core areas of IOWN technology, and software, AI models, inference, and application services that leverage these areas.
President Shimada stated, “We believe that building  IOWN ecosystem through these investments and promoting the creation of new businesses is essential for forming the next generation of AI infrastructure and industrial foundations.”

 “IOWN AI Fund” will solicit investments from companies in various countries. To avoid double taxation, it will be based in the Cayman Islands. Meanwhile, the actual discovery and selection of investment targets will be handled by the operating company, “Catalight Capital.” This company operates primarily in Silicon Valley. While it also has an office in Tokyo, its focus remains on Silicon Valley.
Currently, 22 companies have committed to investing, totaling approximately 80 billion yen. The first closing is scheduled for June, with the final closing planned for the end of the year.

NTT’s Vice President, Tadao Yanase, said, “The key concept of the fund is ‘building a global IOWN ecosystem.’ Currently, many IOWN-related startups are emerging on a global scale. We need to work with these companies to build a global IOWN ecosystem”.

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