Continual Challenges to Create New Businesses
Leveraging Venture Builder
*The amounts shown for each fund are the total expected amount (including planned investment).
DeNA is an “eternal venture,” and we proactively take on the challenge of creating new businesses.
DeNA's Venture Investment business actively invests in companies that provide services capable of accelerating innovation in the mobile internet area.
To achieve this, in addition to our initiatives in each of our businesses and M&A, we also have Venture Builder in Delight Ventures, the DeNA Group fund. This business provides support for entrepreneur candidates from both within and outside DeNA. In this initiative, DeNA is involved from the earliest stages through the growth period, and acts as a partner providing proactive support, including providing personnel and knowhow. We leverage this option strategically, sometimes receiving capital gains from invested companies, sometimes through M&A at market value, and sometimes by bringing a venture into the DeNA Group as a new business.
This initiative is making steady progress, and we have already invested and produced 28 (as of August 2025) startups. Delight Ventures’ Venture Investment has also invested in many DeNA alumni who are proactively leveraging our programs and taking on entrepreneurial challenges.
In April 2025, we established DeNA AI Link Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary that provides consulting and solutions related to the utilization of AI. Leveraging DeNA's strengths—including its IT and AI expertise, broad engineering foundation, and network—DeNA AI Link offers AI consulting and solutions aimed at supporting the improvement of Japanese society's productivity through the use of AI. AI-related initiatives are being promoted across the entire Group, as shown in the figure below.
Supporting AI Startups
DeNA ver.2.0 "AI" For & With Startups
DeNA is promoting a program to support startups by leveraging AI.
●Examples of Support Menus
・Go to Market Support: We actively support the Go to Market strategy by utilizing DeNA's broad business network to introduce customers and potential partners
・DeNA as a Customer: We utilize DeNA as a customer to help expand product sales and improve product quality
・DeNA Startup Boost Guides: DeNA's AI experts evaluate AI services that are launched daily from multiple perspectives, proposing the optimal AI service according to the situation and supporting its implementation
Accelerator Programs
DeNA and Delight Ventures offer several accelerator programs.
・Domain Expert Program: A program where "Vertical Domain Experts"—who possess deep knowledge, experience in a specific field, and passion for problem-solving—team up with DeNA's product and AI experts to jointly develop products
・V-Challe: Operated by Delight Ventures, this program nurtures entrepreneurs by providing sounding board opportunities for ideas and offering business ideas. 30 entrepreneurs have already emerged from this program
・DelightX: This program is offered in the San Francisco Bay Area, providing extensive support from local Japanese entrepreneurs
Encouraging the Creation of New Businesses & Fostering Talent
At DeNA, we have encouraged new business creation by our employees since our founding. We have an open call for new business ideas and will assess them, but in addition to that, we have initiatives focusing on providing opportunities for the proposers of ideas to learn about the approach to new business creation and gain the necessary knowledge and skills. In our various business areas we have employees with ideas for new businesses and experienced team members working in tandem, and by fostering new business creation among our employees in this environment we give a beneficial push to our initiatives in existing businesses.
Business Creation Through Coordination with Venture Capital
DeNA & Delight Ventures are working together to encourage new business creation.
Some unique initiatives include online discussions and Q&A sessions about business creation with venture capitalists who are active on the front lines of startup investment and Venture Builder. We promote more pragmatic exploration and business creation with an awareness of the market and external investors by enabling our DeNA team members who are pursuing entrepreneurship or have new business ideas to receive assessments and feedback on their ideas from an investor perspective. Depending on the new business idea, the original proposer may choose to be the owner of the entrepreneurial process. The DeNA Group overall aims to create major value by leveraging the functions and insight of Venture Builder in Delight Ventures to support the realization of more pioneering and challenging startup ideas.
Aside from that, through broad venture capital fund investment we are deepening links with the global startup community and deepening our understanding of trends in business creation around the world as well as the state of value creation, and leveraging that to take on the challenge of achieving leaps in growth, such as in the creation of synergies with existing businesses through specific collaborations with startups and M&A.