AI Lab: The Driver of Our Innovation and Competitiveness

Corporate research labs are vital for long-term growth. Leading global companies invest heavily in R&D to build sustainable businesses in areas with high potential. In recent years, Japan has also witnessed a surge in research organizations, particularly among emerging IT firms and startups.

We launched AI Lab in 2016 as CyberAgent's dedicated R&D organization. As one of the earliest research labs established by an advertising company in Japan, its founding purpose was to pioneer a broad spectrum of AI technologies related to all facets of digital marketing.

As of April 2025, AI Lab boasts a team of around 100 researchers, about 65% of whom hold PhDs. This scale of expertise is unparalleled in the advertising industry. We have been ranked 4th in Japan and 49th globally for our AI research leadership, following NTT and Fujitsu, and are the only advertising company in Japan to be included in this ranking.
Our research focuses on five core domains: Economics, Graphics, Creative, Conversational AI, and Human Behavior Understanding. This multi-faceted approach directly enhances CyberAgent's competitive edge.
 

Real-world applications involve applying new knowledge from research to our services and products to create tangible value. Applying research to services is generally challenging, and depending on the project's scale, a single implementation can take several years.

At AI Lab, we actively pursue the real-world applications of our research in our own services through seamless collaboration with our business divisions. We manage over 150 ongoing implementation projects annually, driving continuous innovation.
We recently launched the "AI Strategy & Planning Office" within AI Lab, a dedicated unit designed to accelerate the path from research to business. This fosters collaborations that transcend traditional research boundaries and enables a greater volume of partnerships.

By applying our research findings to live services, we have made substantial contributions to performance enhancement, including instances where advertising effectiveness has more than doubled. The scope of our implemented services is broad, ranging from our ad delivery platforms and the "KIWAMI-Prediction" series to remote customer service powered by AI models and robots.We are also expanding our R&D capabilities from the advertising field to the entertainment sector. This includes establishing the "Game AI Lab" and "Animation AI Lab," as well as deepning collaboration with "ABEMA." 

AI Lab actively pursues joint research with universities conducting cutting-edge studies. These industry-academia partnerships generate powerful synergies. We have seen impressive outcomes, where implementing the results of joint research into our products has contributed over several hundred million yen in revenue.

We are currently engaged in around 45 industry-academia collaborations, partnering with top-tier domestic research labs, especially in the advertising domain. By fostering close ties with these academic institutions, we continuously absorb the latest knowledge and accelerate our pace of innovation.

In these joint projects, AI Lab has earned high praise from our university partners. They value the close alignment between the lab and service teams, which enables a rapid feedback loop, and our strong technological capabilities that ensure joint research progresses smoothly and reliably. This combination of expertise is the bedrock of AI Lab's strength and the key to our successful collaborations.

The number of accepted papers validates our position as one of Japan's leading research organizations.
Having a paper accepted at an academic conference signifies the creation of a new discovery or method in that field. We at AI Lab are consistently achieving this, driving progress and innovation.

We present our research related to advertising across various academic disciplines at prestigious international conferences. In 2024, 87 of our peer-reviewed papers were accepted. 

The advantages a research organization provides to a corporation are multifaceted.

For example, it can generate new revenue streams. In our advertising business, new technologies and approaches developed through research have led to improved service performance and expanded functionality, resulting in cases that generate sales of over several hundred million yen.

By pioneering research in new domains, we are also able to venture into untapped market segments and rapidly generate business opportunities. Our early-mover advantage in R&D, exemplified by the release of our proprietary large language model in early 2023, is a direct contributor to our corporate competitiveness.

This is possible because we have forged a system where our engineers, business leaders, and executives work in unison, enabling us to tackle high-level challenges. Creating such a framework is a formidable task, and many companies falter at the very beginning. We, however, began focusing on this organizational architecture nearly a decade ago, which has culminated in our current research structure.

Our ability to conduct R&D in a fast cycle thanks to our close proximity to business divisions is a significant strength. AI Lab will continue to meet societal expectations as a research organization seriously committed to "creating value through research."