On June 25, 2026, the AI Foundation Community Innovators Pitch Competition was held at WeWork Iceberg in Tokyo. The event was organized by the AI Foundation Community (AIFC), which connects SoftBank’s startup support program AI Foundation for Startups (AIFS) with the WeWork community.
Judges from four companies took part: JR Tokai Information Systems (JTIS), NVIDIA Japan, SoftBank and WeWork Japan. Six Japanese AI startups pitched. For ENKA Co., Ltd. (LIVE RUSH Group), Representative Director Haruka Ozaki took the stage and presented our business and upcoming initiatives, centered on the AI call center platform AIRI.
Pitches were judged on technical innovation, feasibility and business concreteness, growth potential, co-creation synergy and pitch quality. ENKA received the JTIS Award. The Q&A went deep into our rollout strategy, cost design and security measures, and Katsutaka Ishikawa, Director and Head of Digital Strategy at JTIS, recognized the sincerity with which we took on those questions. As a prize, ENKA received a two-hour business one-on-one session with JTIS.
We will build on this experience and keep working on bringing AIRI into real-world use and growing the business.