Rakuten Selected for Japan AI Research Program
Tokyo, Japan - Rakuten Group Inc. said it was selected for a Japanese government artificial intelligence research programme and will begin work on language models in August.
The e-commerce company was selected for the third round of the Generative AI Accelerator Challenge Project, which is administered by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.
The selection was made following applications submitted in March 2025.
The program offers computational resources for AI development and facilitates the sharing of technical knowledge. Previous rounds were held in February and October 2024.
Rakuten will research what it calls "generative AI foundation models integrating long-term memory mechanisms with interactive learning."
The research focuses on large language models for processing Japanese text.
The company has developed Japanese language models since March 2024, including its "Rakuten AI 2.0" model.
The system employs a Mixture of Experts architecture with multiple sub-models. Only the relevant sub-models activate during queries, which the company claims reduces costs compared to conventional models.
The research will incorporate technologies to expand model memory functions and increase information access during response generation.
The company said this will enable models to retain user conversations.
Rakuten said the technology addresses constraints in transformer architectures that process long text contexts.
The development targets cost reduction through the use of optimized algorithms.
The research will be applied to services within Rakuten's business operations, the company stated.
Yuu Hirate, Deputy General Manager of Rakuten Institute of Technology, said: "Through this research and development, we aim to realise highly personalised AI agents optimised for Japanese and contribute to expanding AI utilisation possibilities across society."
Rakuten has adopted "AI-nization" as a business theme to implement AI across its operations.
The GENIAC project is part of Japan's efforts to develop domestic AI capabilities.