‘Local start-up collaborates with KDDI to enhance GenAI’

KDDI has entered into a capital and business alliance with AI start-up Elyza to launch a generative AI platform called GenAI. Elyza, founded by professors at the University of Tokyo, will soon become a subsidiary of KDDI with the operator holding a 43% stake and KDDI Digital Divergence holding a 10% interest.

The alliance aims to leverage Elyza’s large language models (LLMs), with the latest model boasting 70 billion parameters, the highest in Japan. By combining Elyza’s LLM research and development expertise with KDDI Group’s computing infrastructure and network resources, the partnership seeks to fast-track the deployment of GenAI.

The joint venture plans to introduce three types of services to businesses and local governments in the near future: a Japanese-language general-purpose LLM using an open model, a domain-specific LLM, and digital transformation support and AI SaaS using GenAI.

Elyza has been conducting research and development on LLMs since 2019 and has been developing a general-purpose LLM since the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022. The company has already released LLMs with 7 billion parameters and 13 billion parameters for commercial use.