The University of Tokyo, SoftBank, and LINE Yahoo announce the establishment of the “Beyond AI Collaborative Innovation Partnership (BAICIP)” on September 19, 2025, utilizing the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's CIP (Collaborative Innovation Partnership) system. This partnership has commenced activities to accelerate the commercialization of technologies developed through joint research.

The University of Tokyo, SoftBank, and LINE Yahoo established the Beyond AI Joint Project in 2020 as part of the Institute for AI and Beyond, aiming to create a joint research ecosystem. Subsequently, they launched two CIPs (Collaborative Innovation Partnerships) and, based on the research outcomes obtained there, established two business companies. However, establishing one business company per CIP posed challenges in terms of rapid commercialization and steady progress in the societal implementation of AI, due to the cumbersome procedures and significant time required to transition from research to commercialization. To address these challenges, following the revision of CIP establishment and operation guidelines by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in June 2024, we established the platform-based “Beyond AI Collaborative Innovation Partnership (BAICIP)” This partnership enables the establishment of multiple business companies from a single CIP that conducts parallel research on multiple themes.

The Beyond AI Collaborative Innovation Partnership will conduct experimental research on advancing AI technologies for the era of personal AI agents and developing foundational technologies. It will also promote AI application research in fields such as medical healthcare, which has been pursued as part of the Beyond AI collaborative projects. Furthermore, in collaboration with SoftBank and its group companies, the partnership will undertake proof-of-concept (PoC) initiatives focused on utilizing and circulating data across various industrial sectors. By maximizing the strengths of its platform-based CIP model and enabling multiple research themes to progress simultaneously, the partnership aims not only to accelerate commercialization and the societal implementation of AI but also to foster new business creation through synergies between research themes. Furthermore, in the future, it seeks to evolve into a platform facilitating the transition from research to commercialization for AI, welcoming participation from other universities, research institutions, and companies.

Related links
UTokyo Focus
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/ja/press/z1701_00074.html
SoftBank News
https://www.softbank.jp/corp/news/press/sbkk/2025/20251010_02/
CIP(Collaborative Innovation Partnership)
https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/tech_promotion/kenkyuu/kenkyuuindex.html

The University of Tokyo, pafin Inc., SoftBank Corp., and others have established a new company, Medical Imaging Innovation Lab Corp., on September 1, 2025, to support the development of medical AI (artificial intelligence) through the collection, processing, and distribution of medical image data.

This project originated from the University of Tokyo's “Development of a Medical Image Data Distribution System Utilizing ICT” project, with pafin joining in 2019. Since 2021, we have partnered with the University of Tokyo and SoftBank through the Institute for AI and Beyond to jointly research technologies that extract value from medical images like CT and MRI scans. In 2022, utilizing the CIP (Collaborative Innovation Partnership) system, the ‘CIP about medical image ’ was established with Project Professor Kin Taichi of the University of Tokyo as the research leader. Following practical research (business verification) utilizing the research results from CIP, Medical Imaging Innovation Lab Corp. was established, and service provision has now commenced.

Medical Imaging Innovation Lab Corp. will leverage the strengths of each company, including the value creation of medical images using cutting-edge technology from the University of Tokyo, the construction and operation of a medical image platform using pafin's system development capabilities, and SoftBank's business promotion capabilities, to develop new medical image services that meet the needs of medical and research sites.

Related links
UTokyo Focus　
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/ja/press/z1701_00070.html
SoftBank News
https://www.softbank.jp/corp/news/press/sbkk/2025/20250901_01/
pafin News
https://www.pafin.com/news/foundMEDiiL

CIP(Collaborative Innovation Partnership)
https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/tech_promotion/kenkyuu/kenkyuuindex.html

A research group consisting of Professor Kenichi Ohki (affiliated with Institute for AI and Beyond (Beyond AI), Graduate School of Medicine, and International Research Center for Neurointelligence (WPI-IRCN), The University of Tokyo), Professor Teppei Matsui (Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University (at the time of this research: Lecturer, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo)), Assistant Professor Takayuki Hashimoto, and Assistant Professor Tomonari Murakami (Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo), and Assistant Professor Masato Uemura (Faculty of Medicine, Kansai Medical University (at the time of this research: Project Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo)) have discovered a new mechanism by which the cerebral visual cortex separates visual information from spontaneous activity.

It is known that the brains of organisms, including humans, exhibit spontaneous activity generated by the brain itself even in the absence of sensory input (e.g., during rest). Spontaneous activity has been observed in various animals and is considered one of the most characteristic features of the biological brain. If spontaneous activity cannot be distinguished from activity in response to sensory input, it could lead to incorrect perceptions or hallucinations. However, in reality, the brain of living organisms can accurately process sensory information. The mechanism behind this has remained largely unexplained. Particularly, it was unclear how spontaneous activity is processed in the visual cortex of mammals, which forms a hierarchical network of multiple areas. Therefore, this study used marmosets, small primates with a visual system closer to that of humans and capable of advanced neural activity measurements, to analyze in detail the relationship between spontaneous activity and visual responses in multiple visual-related areas of the cerebral cortex. The research group discovered that within the hierarchical network of the cerebral visual cortex, the patterns of spontaneous activity and visual responses are similar in lower hierarchical levels, but gradually separate as one moves from lower to higher hierarchical levels. This gradual separation along the hierarchy suggests that the hierarchical nature of the network plays an important role in the separation of spontaneous activity and visual responses. This study not only proposes a new information processing mechanism of the cerebral cortex but also has the potential to contribute to the development of artificial intelligence that incorporates the advantages of the biological brain.

This research was supported by the Beyond AI Joint Project which is a collaborative initiative launched by the University of Tokyo and SoftBank, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (JSPS）.

The findings of this research was published in the British scientific journal "Nature Communications" on December 4 2024 (UK time).

・The full press release (in Japanese only) in PDF.
https://www.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/hubfs/press-release/2024/0207/003/text.pdf

＜RELATED LINKS＞
・nature com.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54322-x

・UTokyo Focus
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/ja/press/

To the University of Tokyo faculty,

Beyond AI Joint Project with SoftBank aims to build an ecosystem for the social implementation and commercialization of research results through the Institute for AI and Beyond.
Currently, the Institute promotes mid-to-long-term (basic research) and “high-cycle” research (applied research). In high-cycle research, we aim to achieve social implementation and commercialization through the establishment of collaborative innovation partnerships (CIP) and eventually the establishment of companies, contributing to the further development of AI research in Japan and the realization of a better society.

The Institute for AI and Beyond has decided to call for proposals from research groups (individuals are also acceptable, but not students only) to solve issues faced by SoftBank or propose new research ideas to promote the industrialization of themes related to generative AI.
The following will be provided free of charge by SoftBank for conducting research:

1. Large-scale AI computing "NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD" (free of charge)
2. Support for building the necessary environment to utilize the above SuperPOD (free of charge)
3. Creation of AI learning data necessary for research (free of charge only if requested to be created by Softbank)

In addition, research budgets will be provided within the framework of pre-high-cycle research in Beyond AI Joint Project with SoftBank.

Overview of the Call for Proposals (Pre-High-Cycle Research)
■ Research Period: In principle, within one year (if crossing fiscal years, settlement is done annually)
■ Research Budget (excluding the above free provisions): Direct costs up to 10 million yen per project
■ Number of Projects to be Promoted: Approximately 6 projects
■ Eligibility: Faculty members (including project faculty members) and researchers (such as project researchers) with an employment relationship with the University of Tokyo
■ Application Deadline: By 18:00 on Monday, January 20, 2025 (JST)
■ Others: Decision on acceptance or rejection will be made after interview by the institute and consultation with the SoftBank researchers.
Themes other than those being recruited are also accepted, but themes that cannot create synergy with SoftBank may not be adopted.

※ Please be sure to check the following PDF (jn Japanese) for details (including how to apply).
https://beyondai.jp/contents/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/call_for_superpoduser.pdf

Please send any queries you may have regarding the invitation for proposals to the following address:
bai.kenkyushien.adm[at]gs.mail.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Please change [at] to @
(Research Support Team at the Institute for AI and Beyond)

＜RELATED LINKS＞
https://www.softbank.jp/corp/news/press/sbkk/2023/20231031_01/
https://www.nvidia.com/ja-jp/data-center/dgx-superpod/

A research group consisting of Associate Professor Takahiko Makiuchi, Assistant Professors Tomosato Hioki and Yuki Shimizu, Graduate Student Koujiro Hoshi, and Professor Eiji Saitoh (also affiliated with IMR (Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University）, as Chief Researcher, and concurrently serving as Professor at the Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo, collaborated with Mehrdad Elyasi, Assistant Professor at IMR (Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University） (WPI-AIMR), and Gerrit Ernst-Wilhelm Bauer, Chief Researcher, to discover a mechanism that allows for persistent magnetic coherence in magnets, which was conventionally believed to last only for a short time.

The coherence within magnets has the potential to handle both 0 and 1 information, but maintaining this state for an extended period was considered challenging, limiting its practical applications. However, by successfully extracting the hidden coherence within magnets in this study, new possibilities have opened up for the development of magnetic information devices.

This research was supported by the Beyond AI Joint Project which is a collaborative initiative launched by the University of Tokyo and SoftBank, CREST-JST, ERATO-JST and Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (JSPS）.

The findings of this research was published in the British scientific journal "Nature Materials" on February 6, 2024 (UK time).

・The full press release (in Japanese only) in PDF.
https://www.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/hubfs/press-release/2024/0207/003/text.pdf

＜RELATED LINKS＞
・nature com.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-024-01798-z

・UTokyo Focus
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/

AI House Davos: A GLOBAL FORUM FOR AI PROGRESS

The UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond※ announced the results of 'AI House Davos'（https://www.aihousedavos.com/) held in conjunction with the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in January 2024.
The event aimed to promote discussions and advancements in the field of artificial intelligence during the WEF Annual Meeting (Davos Conference).

https://beyondai.jp/contents/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/AI-House-Davos_Report.pdf

※ The Beyond AI Joint Project is a collaborative initiative launched by The University of Tokyo and SoftBank, with the aim of developing an ecosystem for social implementation and business deployment of research outcomes generated from the “Institute for AI and Beyond”. https://beyondai.jp/?lang=en/

AI House Davos: A GLOBAL FORUM FOR AI PROGRESS

The UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond※1 intends to support the “AI House Davos” (https://www.aihousedavos.com), launched during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2024, taking place in Davos, Switzerland between 15 and 19 January 2024, as an initiator.

【Sessions by the UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond】
The UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond will co-host the following sessions at AI House Davos ("AI House"), inviting experts and presidents of leading universities around the world to participate in panel discussions on the themes of AI and governance and AI and higher education.

① AI Governance and Safety - G7 Hiroshima AI Process
・ Date & Time: Tuesday, January 16, 2024 14:00 - 14:40（CET）
・ Venue: Valley Stage, AI House Davos, Promenade 68, 7270 Davos Platz
・ Format: Interactive Panel Discussion
[Session Coordinators]:
・ Arisa Ema (Associate Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo)
・ Tomomi Yamazaki (Deputy Director, Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo)
[Speakers]:
・ Amandeep Gill (Under-Secretary-General, Tech Envoy - United Nations)
・ Christoph Winterhalter (Vice President, International Organization for Standardization)
・ Yoichi Iida (Director, Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
・ Arisa Ema 【Moderator】
https://zoon.swisscom.com/en/event/ai-house-davos/agenda/b743ba75-6fb9-4f6e-93ef-24146df97758

② AI and Higher Education
・Date and Time: Wednesday, January 17, 2024 10:00 – 10:55（CET）
・Venue: Valley Stage, AI House Davos, Promenade 68, 7270 Davos Platz
・Format: Interactive Panel Discussion
[Session Coordinators]:
・Phil Baty (Chief Global Affairs Officer, Times Higher Education)
・Tomomi Yamazaki (Deputy Director, Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo)
[Speakers]:
・Eng Chye Tan (President, National University of Singapore)
・Irene Tracey (Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford)
・Paul Alivisatos (President, The University of Chicago)
・Kohei Itoh (President, Keio University)
・Teruo Fujii (President, The University of Tokyo) 【Moderator】
[Overview]:
With presidents from leading universities as panelists, this panel has two objectives. One is to advance higher education by addressing the challenges posed by generative AI and promoting its utilization. The other is to contemplate how higher education, especially university education, should evolve as generative AI progressively replaces many aspects of human intelligence.
https://zoon.swisscom.com/en/event/ai-house-davos/agenda/5d911ca5-600f-4d33-b479-9c7739d10b89/

③ Harmony in Coexistence: Navigating the Future of Human-AI Partnership
・Date and Time: Thursday, January 18, 2024 18:30 – 19:10（CET）
・Venue: Valley Stage, AI House Davos, Promenade 68, 7270 Davos Platz
・Format: Interactive Panel Discussion
[Session Coordinator]:
・Chris Luebkeman (Head of Strategic Foresight, ETH Zurich)
[Speakers]:
・Aurelio Cortese (Head of Dep. of Decoded Neurofeedback, Computational Neuroscience Labs - Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International)
・Menna El-Assady (Professor, ETH Zurich)
・James Landay (Co-Director, Stanford HAI)
https://zoon.swisscom.com/en/event/ai-house-davos/agenda/1452680a-6eff-47a3-a08c-773eb0ca2beb/

【Overview of the “AI House Davos”】
The AI House will bring together leading representatives from academia, industry, government, and other relevant stakeholder groups. The intention is to create a platform for the global conversation on the impact of AI and make the AI House Davos a premier international conference for AI during the WEF Annual Meeting 2024.
The UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond, intends to support the AI House as an initiator, with Merantix※2, ETH AI Center, Swisscom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and G42※3,during 15 - 19 January 2024.

Date: 15 - 19 January 2024
・Initiators: Merantix, ETH AI Center, Swisscom, UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, G42
・Venue: 750m from the Congress Center on the Promenade
・URL: https://www.aihousedavos.com/

※１ The Beyond AI Joint Project is a collaborative initiative launched by the University of Tokyo and SoftBank, with the aim of developing an ecosystem for social implementation and business deployment of research outcomes generated from the “Institute for AI and Beyond”. https://beyondai.jp/?lang=en/
※２ https://www.merantix.com/
※３ https://www.g42.ai/

● Joint initiative by Merantix, ETH AI Center, Swisscom, UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
● With AI likely a key theme of WEF ‘24, AI House Davos will bring together academics, industry leaders, government officials, investors, and entrepreneurs

Merantix, ETH AI Center, Swisscom, UTokyo Institute for AI and Beyond,and Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announce the launch of the AI House Davos during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting, 15th-19th January 2024. The Swiss Foreign Ministry will be the hosting country partner of this year’s edition.
By bringing together academics, industry leaders, civil society, government officials, investors, and entrepreneurs, the AI House will facilitate in-depth discussions and collaborative efforts to ensure that the requisite safeguarding of AI is made accessible and prioritized by all. The AI House will provide a dedicated platform to foster an inclusive multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach to addressing critical challenges facing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, including responsible scaling, integration, and regulation.
As the key topic of global conversation, debate, and legislation throughout 2023, AI will certainly be a key topic of discussion during the WEF Annual Meeting. The AI House and its partners will attract the most relevant stakeholders from academia, government, industry, finance, civil society and the entrepreneurial world to provide a global forum to discuss the benefits AI can bring to humankind and world economies, and to provide a catalyst for responsible and sustainable innovation.
The AI House is a global, multi-stakeholder platform, with partners and subsidiary sponsors including European Commission, European Innovation Council, European AI Forum, Automation Anywhere, EPFL, TÜV AI Lab, and more. Forbes, Handelsblatt, and Devex will join as media partners.

Teruo Fujii, President of The University of Tokyo (Founding Director, Institute for AI and Beyond), comments: “AI is transforming human society, including education, science, and industry. To further contribute to the development of AI research and the realization of a better world, the Institute for AI and Beyond, a collaborative initiative launched by the University of Tokyo and SoftBank, is advancing AI research and pioneering new sciences and businesses while solving AI-related social problems. The Davos AI House will be the suitable platform for us to have discussions with multiple stakeholders on different aspects including the topics related to the G7 Hiroshima AI process.”

・AI House Official Website
https://www.aihousedavos.com/

・For more detail, please refer to the URL below.
https://beyondai.jp/contents/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AIHouseDavos2024_EN.pdf

A research team consisting of Professor Kenichi OHKI and Jumpei UKITA (a graduate student at the time of the research) of the Department of Physiology, Division of Functional Biology, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, revealed that some of the vulnerabilities in deep neural networks can be mitigated by injecting random noise that mimics the brain in deep neural networks.

Currently, artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving at an accelerating pace, and its underlying structure is based on deep neural networks. Deep neural networks are known to be tricked into producing outputs that are clearly different from that of humans by malicious attacks, known as adversarial attacks. For example, image recognition AI in self-driving cars must correctly recognize a "stop" road sign as "stop" to make the car stop. However, the image recognition AI may not be able to correctly recognize a "stop" road sign generated by a hostile attack, even if it is clearly a "stop" sign when seen by a human. As a result, the car may not be able to stop, leading to a traffic accident. Thus, vulnerability to hostile attacks is one of the major challenges of implementing AI in society.

Incorporating brain properties of animals, such as humans, into AI may help overcome such vulnerabilities. The research team discovered that certain types of vulnerability can be reduced by introducing noise that mimics the randomness of neurons in the brain into deep neural networks. By using this method, the possibility of creating AI that more closely resembles the behavior of humans and other animals is thought to be greater.

This research was supported by the Institute for AI and Beyond of the University of Tokyo, the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) "Project to Elucidate the Entire Functional Brain Network through Innovative Technology", the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and CREST-JST.
The research result was published in Neural Networks on 16 September 2023 online.

Professor Ohki is the Project Leader for the Basic Research Project entitled “Development of next generation AI by modeling brain information” at the Institute for AI and Beyond.

・The full press release (in Japanese only) in PDF.
https://beyondai.jp/contents/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Press-Release_NeuralNetworks_20230916_Web.pdf

＜RELATED LINKS＞
・Published paper (Title: Adversarial attacks and defenses using feature-space stochasticity)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0893608023004422?via%3Dihub
DOI 10.1016/j.neunet.2023.08.022

・Article in English at UTokyo Focus
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00311.html

The 2nd GENEE Symposium titled “Social Challenges Brought by Generative AI: Data Bias, Fake News, and Disordered Legal Systems” was held on August 3, 2023. The event was hosted by Generative AI and Educational Environment Research Project (GENEE) of the Collaborative Research Organization of Educational Technology at the University of Tokyo and co-hosted by the B’AI Global Forum.
Profs. Kaori Hayashi, Tohko Tanaka, and Yuko Itatsu of the B'AI Global Forum were among the speakers at the symposium.

For further details ;
https://baiforum.jp/en/events/en048/