Series B Funding Announcement and Our Challenge for the Future

I am Seigen Hagiwara, representative of Lazuli Inc. I am pleased to report that Lazuli has raised 100 million yen in a Series B round. First, I would like to express my gratitude for being given this opportunity.

To our customers who use and support our product every day, to our talented teammates, and to our investors who believed in the future and supported us, as well as the investors and operating companies who have always shown interest, thank you very much.

For us, this funding is not the goal but one of the milestones along the way. Still, we are relieved to have reached the major milestone of Series B as a result of continuing to grow at remarkable speed. We will continue to take on challenges, keep growing at remarkable speed, and aim for an even bigger future. This time, I will talk about the future we envision, as well as where Lazuli has been and where it is headed.

What kind of company is Lazuli?

Lazuli is committed to the mission of "organizing product information and making it easy for everyone to access and use." Focusing on industries such as retail, e-commerce, and manufacturing, we support companies' digital transformation through the practical use of product information, and work to make it easy for society as a whole to access product information.

For example, here are some challenges we have helped solve.

Retail companies
・Unable to organize and optimize product information for e-commerce and digital initiatives

E-commerce businesses
・Want to use product information more effectively to improve LTV and CRM

B2C manufacturers
・Inefficient product information management and data preprocessing for POS data analysis, making it slow to respond to trends
・Want to improve the accuracy of category management and digital marketing

Lazuli solves these challenges with Lazuli PDP, our AI-powered product data platform.

What is Lazuli's strength?

1. A product that delivers dramatic results

Our product data platform is the "foundation" of our customers' businesses. It comprehensively and efficiently handles the management, processing, generation, and integration of product information needed for corporate digital initiatives such as e-commerce, CRM, POS data analysis, and supply chain optimization, accelerating a wide range of digital initiatives and delivering dramatic results.

For example, at Beisia, one of our retail customers, EC sales tripled in three months after the introduction of Lazuli PDP, and product information entry time was reduced by 80%, among other major results, dramatically growing the company's online supermarket business.

Also, at a major manufacturer, Lazuli PDP was introduced to transform the customer experience online. Product data handled by core systems, each organization, and the company website is all fed into Lazuli PDP for centralized management, and the company is working toward achieving a Single Source of Truth.

At an interior goods manufacturer, Lazuli PDP is used to extract and manage feature information from product images as text data. This has improved productivity in building product master data and adding information for digital initiatives.

These are results that cannot be achieved by simply organizing data in the traditional way. They were made possible because we are using the power of AI to rebuild the very way data is used.

2. Solutions that go beyond domains

Lazuli's second strength is versatility. We have delivered results mainly in retail, e-commerce, and CPG manufacturers. However, Lazuli PDP can be applied across many industries. It can address diverse needs such as manufacturing efficiency, logistics optimization, and enhanced customer experiences in financial services.

At a major food manufacturer, when integrating manufacturing, inventory, distribution, and sales data, product information from each system is centralized in the PDP to achieve efficient data visualization and optimization. Until now, product, store, and corporate information had been organized manually, but by leveraging AI in Lazuli PDP, they have automated the data preparation process.

Companies across many industries use our platform, but another characteristic of ours is that many of our customers are enterprise companies.

3. A strong team and culture

Lazuli brings together members with multinational and diverse backgrounds. Each person is a professional, and all share the value of "customer success first." In our mission-driven culture, everyone takes on the challenge of creating value beyond their own role. From the beginning, Lazuli has been fostering an organization and culture with overseas expansion in mind, so our engineering team uses English as the common language, and our various systems are designed with reference to global companies.

Through "professional team play" based on Lazuli's values of Simple, Decision, Leadership, and Kindness, we are solving customer challenges through Lazuli PDP and contributing to business growth.

The significance of this funding round

With this funding round, we will further expand what we have achieved so far and move to the next stage. We will invest mainly in the following four areas to drive business growth.

1. Further evolution of the product

We are currently expanding features based on generative AI. For example, we are rolling out specialized AI functions one by one that can streamline product information management, such as automatically generating product descriptions with generative AI, automatically generating product feature tags from product images, and managing image and text information that can also be used as PIM or DAM.

2. Providing even greater value in the Japanese market

We have been creating value for retail, e-commerce, and manufacturers, but there are still many challenges in other areas that our company can solve. Product information is the foundation of all corporate activity, and we will contribute to the efficiency and optimization of our customers' entire supply chain and value chain.

At the same time, master data issues occur in every domain. We have already begun working on some areas, but we will also tackle the challenges of various kinds of master data, not just product information, including content, media, stores, corporate entities, and customers.

3. Expansion into overseas markets

Our next challenge is the world. There are points where we can contribute globally, so we are preparing for that. We are constantly discussing internally how we can deliver value in different market environments such as North America, Europe, and Asia.

We are already working with several global platforms in both business and technology, so we are planning to take on the global challenge through several approaches.

4. Organizational expansion

To achieve product evolution, deeper penetration of the Japanese market, and expansion into overseas markets, we are looking for like-minded colleagues who will play a major role at this stage. We are currently recruiting outstanding talent for each team, including sales, BDR, marketing, customer success, solution engineering, product engineering, product management, and project management.

Finally

Now that we have reached this major milestone of fundraising, we have begun moving toward even bigger challenges. We are truly delighted to be able to create a new future together with customers, partner companies, employees, and investors who resonate with Lazuli's vision.

Lazuli will continue to become a company that solves larger social issues through the power of AI and data.

We would be grateful for your continued support.

Seigen Hagiwara / Representative Director, CEO & CTO of Lazuli Inc.

2005 Joined Recruit Co., Ltd. After gaining experience in sales, marketing, and product management, he led the promotion of data/AI utilization across multiple in-house businesses as a data scientist and big data evangelist.
2015 Launched the current Study Sapuri AI Research Lab, and led industry-academia collaboration, including joint research with Professor Matsuo of the University of Tokyo, proof-of-concept experiments for AI utilization, and many other data/AI utilization and business implementation initiatives.
2018 Served as Head of the Data Division and Director of the Data Science Research Institute at Toreta Co., Ltd., promoting data/AI utilization in the food service industry while also running an AI consulting company.
2020 Founded Lazuli Inc.
Completed the master's program at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology