Rakuten Announces Winners of Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards 2024

• Rakuten Group, Inc.

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Tokyo, November 11, 2024 - Rakuten Group, Inc. today announced the winners of the Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards 2024. The awards will be presented to the winners at Rakuten Technology Conference 2024, which will be held on November 16. Details on the annual event can be found on the official site.

The Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards are awarded to individuals or organizations that have contributed to innovation in society through advanced technologies. This year, in the 15^th presentation of the awards, three Excellence Awards will be presented based on the theme of "AI-nization 4.all." The theme combines the term "AI-nization," which represents Rakuten's initiatives to infuse AI in every aspect of its business to augment human creativity, accelerate productivity, and drive further growth, with the company's commitment to realizing a world where anyone can enjoy the benefits of AI.

Winners of the Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards 2024
The Excellence Awards are presented to individuals or organizations in various industries and fields which have promoted the advancement of society through technology.

Winner:
GMO Cybersecurity by Ierae, Inc.

GMO Cybersecurity by Ierae, Inc. is a cybersecurity company engaged in cyberattack countermeasures. Their vulnerability research team, GMO Ierae, has won first place for two consecutive years in the Cloud Village CTF, a contest where participants compete using a point system based on their cloud security technologies, at one of the world's largest cybersecurity conferences DEF CON 32. This achievement, especially given the increasing importance of internet security, demonstrates the team's exceptional technical skill and expertise. The work of such outstanding technologists is essential to our daily lives.

The company's contributions to Japan's cybersecurity industry are significant, and their activities are expected to lead to further technological innovation and security enhancement.

Winner
Preferred Networks, Inc.

Preferred Networks, Inc. is an AI company developing and providing products that combine software technologies including deep learning with hardware technologies for computing infrastructure. The company provides its hyperparameter^*1 optimization framework, Optuna, and the Python matrix calculation library for GPU, CuPy, as open-source software (OSS), both of which are highly regarded by AI developers and researchers. Additionally, they are focused on development and provision of large language models. In October this year, they released the 100 billion parameter model PLaMo-100B-Pretrained under a non-commercial license for academic and research purposes, as well as a commercial license for enterprise use. By making these exceptional products available, they contribute to the industry's overall advancement.

Furthermore, Preferred Networks is working to enhance the performance and energy efficiency of AI applications from the hardware side as well as the software side, including generative AI inference chips that are scheduled to be in production in 2026.

Winner
LlamaIndex

LlamaIndex is an AI company developing and providing a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework that facilitates the integration of generative AI models with external data. The company's advanced RAG framework, which features a data framework^*2 compatible with various storage systems, flexible indexing^*3 and advanced workflow management, is offered as OSS. RAG is commonly used to give generative AI systems access to corporate data or the latest information. Their framework significantly simplifies the development of RAG-based generative AI systems, making it widely used by AI developers and researchers worldwide.

Their advanced technology enables the creation of unique AI models optimized for diverse use cases, contributing to the expansion of possibilities in generative AI and natural language processing.

Selection Committee
Chairman: Mickey Mikitani, Chairman and CEO, Rakuten Group, Inc.
Committee members:
Akihito Kurozumi, Group Senior Managing Executive Officer, CIO (Chief Information Officer) & CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Rakuten Group, Inc.
Ting Cai, Group Senior Managing Executive Officer, CAIDO (Chief AI & Data Officer), Group Senior Managing Executive Officer of AI & Data Division, Rakuten Group, Inc.
Members of the Rakuten Technology Conference Team

Through the annual awards, Rakuten aims to support individuals and organizations that strive to achieve revolutionary advancements in technology and promote innovation.

Notes
*1 Refers to parameters set manually in advance to manage the behavior of machine learning models.
*2 Refers to a framework or template for managing data in a specific format.
*3 Refers to data structures prepared in-system for efficient information retrieval

About Rakuten Technology Conference 2024
Date and time: Saturday, November 16, 2024, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. (JST)
*Rakuten Technology Excellence Award 2024 ceremony: 5 p.m. - 6 p.m. (JST)
Venue: Rakuten Crimson House
Address: 1-14-1 Tamagawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 158-0094
Event organizer: Rakuten Group, Inc.
Official site: https://tech.rakuten.co.jp/
Event registration page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rakuten-technology-conference-2024-tickets-1012141661957

*Speakers and other information above are accurate as of the time of release and are subject to change in the future. All company names, product names, service names, etc. mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective companies.