Selected as one of seven finalist startups from 212 presenting ventures across all 42 Morning Pitch sessions held in 2025, Kotoba Technologies delivered its pitch at the Special Edition 2026 and was recognized with the Grand Prize, awarded to the startup expected to achieve significant future growth, as well as the Audience Award, determined by votes from attendees on the day of the event.

Kotoba Technologies is a U.S.–Japan cross-border startup developing a real-time speech AI foundation model, with headquarters in San Francisco and an R&D base in Tokyo (Otemachi). Centered around its proprietary simultaneous speech translation technology, the company has built “Koto,” a speech AI foundation model that integrates ultra-low-latency, highly natural speech recognition, translation, and speech synthesis.

Founded in 2023 by two PhD-level generative AI researchers trained in the United States, the company collaborates with leading members of Japan’s domestic generative AI initiatives leveraging the Fugaku supercomputer.

Within approximately two and a half years of its founding, Kotoba Technologies has raised nearly JPY 3 billion from leading venture capital firms in both Japan and the United States. In addition to private funding, “Koto” has been selected for three consecutive terms under Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and NEDO’s GENIAC program, enabling large-scale GPU supercomputing resources to accelerate research and development.

Breaking Language Barriers

Kotoba Technologies’ mission is to eliminate language barriers.

The company currently offers two primary services:

・An AI-powered simultaneous interpretation app, available to consumers on the Apple App Store and Google Play

• A multilingual voice interface for wearable devices, now being deployed with enterprise clients in the United States, Japan, South Korea, and beyond

The AI simultaneous interpretation app, powered by the latest version of the “Koto” foundation model, has already reached over 100,000 users. With an average latency of under one second from speech input to translated text display, the app enables seamless communication in meetings, business negotiations, travel, hospitality, and many other real-world scenarios — overcoming limitations of conventional AI translation systems.

Designed with intuitive usability in mind, the app can be used immediately without any specialized knowledge. It currently supports Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean, with additional languages scheduled for release on an ongoing basis. The model is particularly strong in East Asian languages centered around Japanese, and the app has already surpassed 100,000 users.

In the coming two months, the app will enable simultaneous interpretation in the speaker’s own voice, with emotional tone also reflected in the output. A team plan for business users is scheduled for release at the end of February, alongside expanded collaborations with conferences and events, both paid and unpaid.
For partnership inquiries, please contact: kotoba_product@kotoba.tech

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