Speaking at MUFG Innovation Partners’ MUIP Innovation Day on March 4, 2026, Llion Jones, co-founder and CTO of Sakana AI, pushed back on AI “bubble” talk, preferring “balloon” — genuine value inflated by overpromising. He pointed to two unresolved problems: AI’s enormous data appetite and weak generalization across contexts.
As an original Transformer co-author, Jones framed Sakana’s post-Transformer research not as a rejection but as confronting hard problems, citing the firm’s Continuous Thought Machine. His guiding philosophy: “Greatness cannot be planned.”
Sakana AI, founded in 2023 by Jones, David Ha and Ren Ito, closed a $135 million Series B in November 2025 at a $2.65 billion valuation, backed by MUFG, Khosla Ventures, NEA, Lux Capital and In-Q-Tel.
His closing line for incumbents: “You may not lose your job to AI itself, but you may lose it to someone who uses AI.”