Anis Uzzaman, founder and CEO of San Jose-based Pegasus Tech Ventures, told The Japan Times in May 2026 that Japan is “now at a turning point,” with the startup ecosystem poised to mature on the back of government support, rising corporate venture capital and internationalization.
Pegasus runs a “venture-capital-as-a-service” model, administering corporate venture funds and connecting them to startups. The firm’s portfolio spans SpaceX, Airbnb, Robinhood, OpenAI and Anthropic.
In April 2026, Uzzaman said he had quadrupled Pegasus’s Japan-focused “Japanet” venture fund to $200 million, citing urgency among Japanese corporates: “They know the AI revolution is happening.”
Uzzaman’s perspective carries weight in Japan: during doctoral studies at Tokyo Metropolitan University he learned Japanese from scratch, and is now an adjunct professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Management.