An AI star seeks to bring self-driving cars to Japan by 2030

Yamamoto sees opportunity in Japan’s shortage of key autonomous driving technologies and co-founded Turing in 2021 with chief technology officer Shunsuke Aoki to fill that gap. — Turing

Issei Yamamoto became one of Japan’s best-known developers of artificial intelligence when his algorithm defeated the top-ranked player of Japanese chess. Now, he’s pursuing an even more challenging task of human emulation: achieving a fully self-driving automotive system.

The 38-year-old is returning to the public eye with the backing of some of Japan’s biggest businesses, including a unit of Mizuho Financial Group Inc and NTT Docomo Ventures Inc, which have invested in his startup, Turing Inc. The firm raised 3bil yen (RM92.77mil or US$19.4mil) in a seed round valuing it at US$100mil (RM478.40mil), according to people familiar with the matter.