mign Completes Third-Party Capital Raise to Accelerate Construction and Real Estate DX

February 12, 2025

mign Completes Funding Round via Third-Party Allotment to Fuel Business Expansion

A Future Expanded by AI: Scaling Next-Generation Solutions That Accelerate Digital Transformation in Construction and Real Estate

mign Inc. (headquartered in Tokyo; CEO: Masahiro Taima; hereinafter “mign”), a developer of next-generation solutions powered by generative AI for the real estate and construction industries, is pleased to announce that it has completed a funding round to support business expansion through a third-party allotment of new shares to Samurai Incubate, Animal Spirits, and four individual investors and entrepreneurs.

◾️ Background to the Funding and Future Plans

Since its founding, mign has developed and delivered AI solutions purpose-built to solve the challenges facing the construction and real estate industries.

Spanning everything from sales proposals and design to regulatory checks and business systems, mign’s innovative AI solutions have driven digital transformation across construction and real estate.

With this new capital, mign will make strategic investments in the following areas to accelerate its growth.

1. Strengthening Our Technology Development Organization

• Expanded recruitment of AI engineers and researchers
• Enhanced R&D facilities
• Investment in the latest AI infrastructure

2. Accelerating the Rollout of Our In-House Solutions

• Expanding the functionality of existing solutions
• Developing new solutions
• Strengthening our customer success organization

3. Preparing for Global Expansion

• Conducting overseas market research
• Recruiting global talent
• Securing international patents

As a company leading digital transformation in construction and real estate, we will continue to develop and deliver innovative solutions that raise productivity and create new value across the industry.

◾️ Comments from the Participating Investors, Entrepreneurs, and Their Organizations

Samurai Incubate Inc. Keita Kato

mign's strength lies in the deep domain expertise and ability to implement cutting-edge technology that CEO Masahiro Taima and his team bring to the table. Samurai Incubate will support mign as it works to create new value for the construction and real estate industries through solutions built on generative AI and other artificial intelligence technologies.

Profile: After completing graduate studies at Keio University, he joined Accenture. He went on to handle investments and management support in the high-tech and electronics sectors at the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, then joined the founding team of the SoftBank Vision Fund’s Tokyo office, where he worked in venture investment. In 2019 he returned to Seto, Aichi Prefecture, to take over his family’s construction firm, Kato Komuten, and has also been part of Samurai Incubate since 2022. He combines more than a decade of investment experience with deep insight into the construction industry.

Animal Spirits LLC Yusuke Asakura

In the construction and real estate industries, proposal work has long depended on the experience and intuition of seasoned professionals, making the transfer of know-how and the pursuit of efficiency urgent priorities. mign is using AI to build a platform that standardizes and automates business processes that until now have lived in the heads of individuals. I look forward to seeing the company strengthen the competitiveness of Japan's construction and real estate industries and help establish a new way of working for the next generation.

Profile: After attending jockey school and working as a racehorse trainer, he graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo and joined McKinsey & Company. While still a university student he founded Naked Technology and served as its president; after its sale to mixi, he went on to serve as mixi’s CEO. Having steered the company back to profitability, he stepped down, spent time as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and then founded Signifiant, which provides management support and industrial finance services for startups. He is the author of “Rongo to Soroban to Watashi” and “Finance Shiko” (Finance Thinking), and currently serves as a visiting researcher at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, an outside director of Septeni Holdings Co., Ltd., and a partner at Tokyo Founders Fund.

Entrepreneur and Angel Investor Nobuhiro Ariyasu

In my very first meeting with mign's founder, Mr. Taima, I sensed a fierce commitment to transforming Japan's construction industry, where so many processes still depend on individual know-how—along with a stubbornness, in the best sense of the word, and real grit. I believe 2025 will be the year when startups applying generative AI to solve real problems in specific industries finally begin to make their presence felt in Japan. With its academic track record and network of relationships, I expect mign to establish itself firmly as a pioneer in this field.

Profile: After working at Unilever Japan, he founded a C2C marketplace for lessons and classes in 2007 and sold all of the company’s shares to Cookpad in 2013. In 2015 he co-founded Tokyo Founders Fund. He is also active as an angel investor, including in Silicon Valley startups, with a portfolio of roughly 130 companies across Japan and the United States, among them Money Forward, CADDi, Kanmu, NOT A HOTEL, and Reiwa Travel. He is a graduate of Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC).

Remu Sugita COO, JMDC

I'm excited to see mign bring sweeping efficiency to the construction and real estate industries through its greatest strengths: rapid development and products that actually work in practice, shaped by direct dialogue with people on the ground!

Profile: A graduate of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine, he completed residencies at NTT Medical Center Tokyo and the University of Tokyo Hospital before joining a Japanese consulting firm focused on social issues. After earning an MBA at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, he joined the Boston Consulting Group. Driven by a desire to bring better healthcare to patients, he founded Clintal Inc. in 2015. When JMDC acquired the company as a subsidiary in 2018, he became COO, saw the company through its listing on the TSE Mothers market, and stepped down in 2022. He currently serves as an outside director at Itokuro Inc. and Ayumi Pharmaceutical, among others, and is a part-time lecturer at the University of Tsukuba.

Tomohito Ebine Co-Founder and Former CEO, OPT

There are plenty of researcher-CEOs who talk about "turning research into results." What sets this company apart is that it already has a track record with major corporations—something rare for a founder still rooted in academia. The angel investors that this capability has attracted are also a reassuring group, which is why I decided to lend my support.

Profile: Co-founder and former President and Representative Director of OPT Inc. After stepping down, he founded Legend Partners Inc., which focuses on investment and business creation. He concurrently serves as a director of Aucfan Co., Ltd., special advisor to the Public-Private Partnership Startup Hub, and a director of NES Inc., among other roles, and works with local governments to nurture and support venture businesses. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Economics at Keio University.

Individual Investor (name withheld at the investor's request)

The construction and real estate industries represent an enormous market, yet the adoption of AI there remains limited, leaving a wealth of problems still waiting to be solved. As for Mr. Taima, beyond his obvious baseline abilities, he has already weathered his share of hard things, and I hold his grit and determination as a startup leader in high regard. I look forward to watching him transform the construction and real estate industries in the years ahead.

Profile: Founded a C2C platform company and led its growth as Director and COO through to IPO. A serial entrepreneur, they have since founded and currently lead a real estate tech company. Their startup investments span more than 100 companies across Japan and the United States, including seed-stage angel investments in several companies that went on to become unicorns.

◾️ Comments from Existing Investors

Yutaka Matsuo Professor, The University of Tokyo Director, SoftBank Group Corp. Researcher, Stanford University

I have great interest in, and high expectations for, the effort to build AI-driven businesses in long-established industries like construction and real estate, and I am proud to support them.

Profile: He graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Tokyo in 1997 and earned his doctorate from the same university in 2002. After working in the Information Technology Research Institute at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), he served as a visiting scholar at Stanford University from 2005 and became an associate professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering in 2007. He specializes in artificial intelligence and higher-order web mining, and is a member of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, the Information Processing Society of Japan, and AAAI.

Masashi Mizunaga Chairman and CEO Star Mica Holdings Co., Ltd.

In real estate and construction, fields where new technology is notoriously hard to introduce, mign is moving quickly to bring a wide range of technologies into practice. What I especially like is the idea of applying the portfolio-diversification approach—standard practice in financial and real estate investing and in the businesses of large corporations—to software applications, treating them as a portfolio even at the startup stage.

Profile: After graduating from the University of Tokyo, he joined Mitsui & Co. in 1988. He earned an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995 and went on to work at the Boston Consulting Group and Goldman Sachs. In 2000 he founded Ichigo Group Holdings (formerly PI Technology) and served as its President and Representative Director, and in 2002 he became President of Star Mica. His books include “Nyumon Venture Finance” (An Introduction to Venture Finance), and he has served as a part-time lecturer at Kyoto University and Gakushuin University.

◾️ Comment from Masahiro Taima, CEO of mign Inc.

Masahiro Taima Representative Director and CEO

Ever since I saw the late Kisho Kurokawa on television as an elementary school student, I dreamed of one day becoming an architect who works on the world stage, and I devoted myself to studying architecture and cities. At university I encountered and put into practice a range of technologies, data science among them, and I came to believe that artificial intelligence—including the generative AI now sweeping the globe—has the potential to fundamentally transform the course of human history. Together with all of you, I hope to build an organization that transcends the boundaries of any single company or nation and becomes part of the foundation on which society builds its future.

Finally, since I first started a business as a student, before mign was founded, armed with nothing but enthusiasm and understanding very little, I have failed more times than I can count and caused trouble for many people along the way. And yet I now find myself supported by such remarkable people. I owe this entirely to everyone who has been part of my journey, and I am deeply grateful.

Profile: He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Urban Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, at the University of Tokyo. He has since served as a project assistant professor at Keio University and Kyoto University, a visiting researcher at University College London and Peking University, and a JSPS Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, specializing in architectural and civil engineering planning and data science.

Read the press release here

https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000063.000100410.html

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