Sota Watanabe's Startail raises an additional 500 million yen from Samsung and others – total of 1 billion yen in seed round | CoinDesk JAPAN

StarTale Labs is a collaboration between Samsung Next, the corporate venture capital (CVC) of Samsung, South Korea's largest company and Asia's second-largest company in market capitalization, and UOB Bank, one of Singapore's three largest banks. Raised 500 million yen from CVC, UOB Venture. The company announced this on February 22nd. This is the first time for both Samsung Next and UOB Venture to invest in a Japanese founder.

This procurement is an additional seed round, and together with the 500 million yen investment from Sony Network Communications in September 2023, the total amount raised in the seed round is 1 billion yen.

The funds raised will be used to develop Web3 products and recruit human resources around the world. The company plans to strategically raise funds from leading companies in Asia and conduct business development with the aim of becoming Asia's leading tech company in the Web3 area.

Mr. Watanabe said in CoinDesk JAPAN's New Year's special feature, “I would like to combine the power of Asia, enter the United States in 2024, and achieve results globally through innovations originating from Japan.''

Related article: Achieve results globally. A year of competition to grow to trillions of yen or tens of trillions of yen – Mr. Sota Watanabe, CEO of Startale Labs[2024 Special Feature]

In January, they announced a Web3 development support program in collaboration with Hakuhodo, NTT Data, and others, and in February, they announced a strategic partnership with Yasushi Akimoto's idol project, and it looks like the company's aggressive moves will continue.

｜Text: CoinDesk JAPAN Editorial Department
｜Image: From the release