Invest in Liquid AI with the Aim of Expanding AI business

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Oct 24, 2024 ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Tatsushi Shingu, President and CEO; hereinafter "CTC") has invested in Liquid AI Japan, Inc. (hereinafter "Liquid AI"), a subsidiary in Japan of Liquid AI, Inc, (headquartered in Massachusetts, USA; Ramin Hasani, Co-founder & CEO), a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spin-off start-up, with the aim of further expanding our AI business. CTC will work together with Liquid AI to develop Japanese-language LLMs and to verify new technologies, endeavoring to offer power-saving AI solutions in Japan.

In recent years, more and more companies are considering adoption of unique language models for specific tasks with a high level of security, in order to utilize generative AI for digital and business transformation. However, building a language model requires a lot of computing resources, and also involves tackling issues including a large-scale deployment of GPU servers and environmental impacts from a rise in power consumption.

Liquid AI, Inc. is a U.S.-based startup established in 2023. The company has developed its own AI model, the "Liquid Neural Network (LNN)", which enables highly adaptive machine learning with minimal processing power. Compared to AI models that process large amounts of language data in parallel, LNN requires smaller computing tasks and reduced memory usage when generating sentences, so it can be deployed and run on small computers and edge devices.

CTC began collaboration with Liquid AI, Inc. in February 2024, and has been conducting technical verification to evaluate the performance and practicality of AI. Taking this opportunity of investing in Liquid AI, CTC will work together with the company for the release of the Japanese-language "Edge LFM", a language model unveiled by Liquid AI, Inc. on October 23, 2024.

In addition to deploying AI on-premise and cloud service platforms, CTC will also accelerate deployment of AI on edge devices such as home appliances and robots to further expand our AI business.

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