About Minamoto
We're capturing the skill of Japan's people so the physical AI of the future can learn from it.
Minamoto is a Japan-based data company. We capture the skilled, real-world hand-work of Japan's craftspeople and workers as training data for the teams building physical AI.
Why I started Minamoto
Minamoto began with a problem close to home. Japan faces one of the world's most acute labor shortages, and some of its most skilled work — the hands of its craftspeople and workers — is at risk of being lost.
I started Minamoto to help physical AI learn from that work: to capture the skill of Japan's people, on the ground and with their consent, so the robots and models of the future can carry it forward.
How we work
Straight to the source
We go directly to Japan's craftspeople and skilled workers and film the work first-hand — not a crowd, not scraped from the web.
Why Japan
Everyday life and rare expert craft, side by side — the kind of diversity a general-purpose physical model needs to generalize, and that is hard to capture anywhere else.
Built on relationships
We invest in lasting relationships with the people we film — so we can go back, go deeper, and keep collecting with their consent, cleanly and in line with Japan's APPI, rather than scrape once and leave.
A standing collection engine
We run our own capture program with partners across Japan, on one spec, shoot after shoot. The dataset grows continuously, and licensing starts from what the engine already produces.
Founding team
Studied Computer Science at the University of Washington. Previously co-founded Reimburse AI in the US, and has been building AI products since his teens.
