Intelligence Briefing
Co-founded Sakana AI in 2023, a Tokyo-based AI lab inspired by nature and evolution. Former Google Brain research scientist leading the Japan team. Previously a derivatives trader and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs Japan. Named to TIME100 AI 2025 list. Sakana raised $135M Series B at $2.65B valuation (Nov 2025). Led the development of AI Scientist, the first AI system whose research paper was accepted at a premier ML conference via peer review.
BSc, Engineering Science — University of Toronto
PhD, Computer Science — University of Tokyo
Operational History
TIME100 AI 2025
Named to the TIME100 AI list for contributions to the field.
awardAI Scientist Development
Led the development of AI Scientist, the first AI system whose research paper was accepted at a premier ML conference via peer review.
researchCo-founded Sakana AI
Established a Tokyo-based AI lab focused on nature-inspired AI.
foundingResearch Scientist at Google Brain
Led the Japan team at Google Brain, focusing on advanced AI research.
careerManaging Director at Goldman Sachs Japan
Oversaw trading operations and strategy at Goldman Sachs in Japan.
careerAGI Position Assessment
Unknown
Believes in building beneficial AI through nature-inspired approaches that are inherently more robust and interpretable than brute-force scaling.
Believes in building beneficial AI through nature-inspired approaches that are inherently more robust and interpretable than brute-force scaling.
Intercepted Communications
“AI should be built to be beneficial and interpretable, drawing inspiration from nature.”
“The future of AI lies in understanding and mimicking the processes of evolution.”
“Our goal at Sakana AI is to create systems that can think and learn like living organisms.”
“Nature has perfected many solutions that we can learn from in AI development.”
“The acceptance of AI Scientist's paper is a milestone for AI research.”
Research Output
AI Scientist: A Novel Approach to Scientific Discovery
2025ICML
First AI system to have a research paper accepted at a premier ML conference.
Neuroevolution: A New Frontier in AI
2021Journal of AI Research
Explored the potential of evolutionary algorithms in AI.
Weight Agnostic Neural Networks
2020NeurIPS
Proposed a novel architecture for neural networks that does not depend on weight initialization.
World Models
2018arXiv
Introduced a new approach to model-based reinforcement learning.
Sketch-RNN: A Generative Model for Vector Drawings
2017ICLR
Introduced a generative model for creating vector drawings.
Field Intelligence
The Future of AI: Nature-Inspired Approaches
AI Scientist: Revolutionizing Research
Understanding Neuroevolution
Known Associates
Yoshua Bengio
collaboratorCollaborated on multiple research papers in AI and machine learning.
View Dossier →Jörg K.H. Franke
collaboratorCo-authored research on weight agnostic neural networks.
View Dossier →Sakana AI Team
co-founderCo-founded Sakana AI, working together on various AI projects.
View Dossier →Google Brain Team
colleagueWorked with the team during his tenure at Google Brain.
View Dossier →Organizational Affiliations
Current
Sakana AI
CEO
2023 - Present
Former
Research Scientist
2021 - 2023
Goldman Sachs
Managing Director
2018 - 2021
Source Material
Dossier last updated: 2026-03-04