Kotoba Technologies
Summary active Updated Jun 29, 2026This profile is AI-generated. If you spot an error, please help us fix it by sharing a URL to the correct information.
Investors
Founders
About
Kotoba Technologies builds real-time speech AI models specialized for East Asian languages — Japanese, Korean, and Chinese — through its proprietary Koto model family 12. The platform powers AI agents, simultaneous translation, voice interfaces for contact centers, wearables, and other devices, deployed through both B2B enterprise contracts and a direct-to-consumer translation application 12. Kotoba was founded in 2023 by Noriyuki Kojima (Co-Founder & CEO) and Jungo Kasai (Co-Founder & CTO), both PhDs from Cornell and the University of Washington 13. The company is dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Tokyo and says Koto has achieved sub-2-second latency in simultaneous translation in internal benchmarks 2.
Disclaimer: This is a lean profile built from initial round coverage and may be expanded as more information becomes available.
Funding History
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead | Co-investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-24 | Seed | $10M | Kindred Ventures | Salesforce Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund 123 |
The June 2026 round was an additional seed bringing total funding to approximately $23 million 13. Proceeds are earmarked for advancing the company’s speech-to-speech model family, optimizing software for edge processing chips, and expanding forward-deployment infrastructure across East Asian enterprise markets 1.
What Investors Say
“The Kotoba research team brings extreme focus and depth to developing the world’s fastest and most genuine speech models for both high-controllability pipelines.” — Steve Jang, Founder & Managing Partner, Kindred Ventures 1
“Kotoba Technologies is developing world-class voice AI and steadily advancing its real-world implementation.” — Ken Asada & Sho Yamanaka, Salesforce Ventures 1
“Kotoba is building more than a translation application, it is creating a voice AI infrastructure platform.” — Austin Noronha, Sony Ventures-US 1
What Founders Say
No independently sourced founder testimonials found at this time.
Sources
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GamesBeat, “Kotoba Technologies raises $10M for real-time voice AI platform in East Asia,” June 24, 2026. Accessed June 2026. https://gamesbeat.com/kotoba-technologies-raises-10m-for-real-time-voice-ai-platform-in-east-asia/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩
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Japan Startup Observer, “Kindred Ventures Leads USD 10m Seed Round for Voice AI Startup Kotoba Technologies,” June 2026. Accessed June 2026. https://japanstartupobserver.substack.com/p/kindred-ventures-leads-usd-10m-seed↩↩↩↩
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FinSMEs, “Kotoba Technologies Raises $10M in Additional Seed Funding,” June 2026. Accessed June 2026. https://www.finsmes.com/2026/06/kotoba-technologies-raises-10m-in-additional-seed-funding.html↩↩↩