Japan’s Awakens gets seed funding to allow users to manage entire genome in the cloud

Silicon Valley-based Awakens, the startup run by Japanese founders developing services and research platforms leveraging full genome data, announced today that it has secured a seed funding round. This round was led by 500 Startups Japan with participation from M3 (TSE:2413), Japanese Organization for Medical Device Development, in addition to several angel investors focused on life science-centric businesses. Angel investors participating in this round include Tomihisa Kamada (inventor of the Japanese feature phone web browser ‘i-mode‘), Tsunegoro Nishino (CEO of healthcare service company MRSO), and Hiroaki Kitano (CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories). Awakens was established in January of 2017 by three prominent scientists: CEO Tomohiro Takano who previously launched a genome-based personal medicare business called G-TAC at his previous company M3, COO Yuta Matsuda who was involved in launching the MyCode genome business at Japanese Internet giant DeNA (TSE:2432), and CTO Kensuke Numakura who is familiar with Genome Infomatics and previously worked at P5, a joint venture of Sony and M3. Compared to Japan, the US in fact has a larger market yet in the genome and related preventive medicine industry.