Weights & Biases Brings Developer-First ML Platform to Japan
Establishes Weights & Biases Japan K.K. and Appoints Akira Shibata as Country Manager
Created on April 11|Last edited on April 12
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Apr 12, 2023 – Tokyo – Weights & Biases (W&B) today announced that it is accelerating business expansion in Japan to better serve the growing demand for ML and AI in the region. The company established a local entity, Weights & Biases Japan K.K., appointed Akira Shibata as the Japan Country Manager, and opened an office in Kyobashi, Tokyo. Weights & Biases Japan is building out a full customer-facing go-to-market team to deliver on this high potential market and will demonstrate its platform capabilities at the AI Expo in Japan on 10-12th, May, 2023.
The ML teams developing the world’s leading large language models (LLMs) and generative AI models, including OpenAI and Stability AI use Weights & Biases as their collaborative development platform to build better models faster. The Weights & Biases platform is trusted by some of the leading innovators of AI development, including BMW, Samsung and NVIDIA. In Japan, organizations like Toyota Woven Planet and Olympus are using Weights & Biases to streamline end-to-end ML workflow and scale enterprise AI development including experiment tracking, artifact versioning, data visualization, hyperparameter tuning and model monitoring.
Japan is one of the fastest growing communities of ML practitioners in the world, with the second largest number of Kaggle Masters and Grand Masters after the United States. The number of users from Japan on the Weights & Biases public cloud platform rose to more than 10,000 by the end of 2022.
“Given the national push toward digitalization and the manufacturing sector which is driving R&D, there is a massive opportunity for ML in Japan,” said Lukas Biewald, CEO of Weights & Biases. “The decision to expand operations in Japan is in direct response to user demand, and we’re excited to welcome Mr. Shibata to lead our efforts in the region.”
“We welcome Weights & Biases' entrance to the Japan market,” said Adrian Gaidon, Director of Machine Learning at Toyota Research Institute. “Our team in Japan widely leverages Weights & Biases, and with a local team supporting us, we look forward to accelerating our strategic product development using ML.”
“By expanding its MLOps platform – which is certified as NVIDIA DGX-Ready and validated with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite – Weights & Biases will accelerate deep learning workloads such as computer vision, natural language processing and generative AI, supporting Japanese enterprises to transform their offerings,” said Takeshi Izaki, Senior Director of Enterprise at NVIDIA.
“There is a growing demand for ML tools across Japan, and we have a huge opportunity to support industry leaders as they expand their ML efforts,” said Akira Shibata, Country Manager, Japan of Weights & Biases. “With our cutting-edge technology, we are already helping some of the most innovative companies in the world successfully harness the power of ML and AI, and with our expanded Japan presence, we are delivering on the promise of machine learning for organizations everywhere.”
Weights & Biases Japan is building out a full customer-facing go-to-market team to deliver on this high potential market and will demonstrate its platform capabilities at the AI Expo in Japan on 10-12th, May, 2023. To learn more about the Weights & Biases developer-first platform please visit https://wandb.ai/site/jp-home.
About Weights & Biases
Weights & Biases is the leading developer-first MLOps platform that provides enterprise-grade, end-to-end MLOps workflow to accelerate ML activities. W&B is trusted by over 500 thousand ML practitioners including teams at NVIDIA, OpenAI, Lyft, Blue River Technology, Toyota, and MILA. Weights & Biases is part of the new standard of best practices for machine learning.
About Akira Shibata
Akira specializes in creating business value through the use of data and AI and has realized data/AI-lead value creation for hundreds of domestic and international companies in a wide range of fields including online services, conventional industries, and creative domains. Previously served as the Japan CEO of DataRobot, an automated machine learning platform, and COO of Qosmo, Inc., a company with a mission to expand creativity through AI. Currently the Japan Country Manager for Weights & Biases, a development and operationalization platform for AI engineers. Akira also serves as an external director and advisor for several other companies.
Contact:
Weights and Biases Japan office: 3-1-1 Kyobashi, Tokyo Square Garden 14F, Chuo, Tokyo, 104-0031, Japan
Email: PR@wandb.com
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