Hajime Institute is an independent research institute that designs AI systems around how people actually read, decide, and work together — so they hold up in front of auditors, boardrooms, and customers.
Four AI companies founded — two acquired, by Yahoo! Japan and Mixi.
Cirius Technologies · Naked Technology
Document AI in production for years across regulated finance and insurance.
Cinnamon AI (Tokyo) · Nexus FrontierTech (London)
Methods peer-reviewed — published, not proprietary claims.
EMNLP 2026 · ACII 2026 · ACL 2026 · CogSci 2026 · Google Scholar
Cognitive-science structure, multiplied by Foundation-Model capability — one engineering discipline, at four sites.
How we work
Four familiar asks — the failure each one buys if built exactly as asked, and the redirection that follows.
The ask
“Build us a document AI.”
Built as asked
A figure no source page contains survives into a filing — with nothing to show the auditor.
The redirection
The provenance discipline. Not a black‑box model.
The ask
“Build us strategic AI for the executive room.”
Built as asked
A contested call is smoothed into one confident answer — the disagreement never surfaces.
The redirection
The disagreement record. Not forced consensus.
The ask
“Build us a customer‑facing AI.”
Built as asked
It closes tickets while missing the distress — and the account churns quietly.
The redirection
The escalation logic. Not a ticket‑closing bot.
The ask
“Build us a culture analytics dashboard.”
Built as asked
The scores stay green while the team that stopped speaking up quietly leaves.
The redirection
The living instrument. Not a frozen dashboard.
The ask is reasonable. The failure is predictable.
The redirection is the work.
What we ship is the strategy · what our clients ship is the system
Four programs · Four cognitive contexts
Track record
What the Director has built and published — checkable from this page.
Founded
Selected investments
Agna Capital·Momos·OpenCommerce Group·DCAP Digital·Cotobox·Cynthialy·Nishika·SVSS
Frontier-tech venture capital, AI, and SaaS across Asia and the Gulf.
Featured publications
Advisory engagements
Major enterprises across telecommunications, financial services, and strategic consulting — under NDA. Named references available in conversation.
The Institute
Hajime Hotta, Ph.D.
Director · Principal Investigator
A core team of researchers and engineers across Tokyo and Hanoi, a wider collaborator network, and the conditions for work that takes a decade rather than a quarter.
First conversations are welcome
A passing thought about cognition × AI, or an enterprise problem to scope — a note is the best place to start. The Director responds personally.
For enterprises: how we engage →