Entered into a partnership agreement with Microsoft Japan Co., Ltd.

Lazuli Inc., which develops and provides the cloud product master "NINJA (Ninja) DB (DB)"*(1) using AI technology (Head Office: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Seigen Hagiwara; hereinafter Lazuli), signed a new partnership agreement on February 1 with Microsoft Japan Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; hereinafter Microsoft Japan), which provides the cloud service Microsoft Azure, with the aim of accelerating digital shift in retail, and will begin full-scale collaboration from March 4.

In December 2020, Lazuli was selected for Microsoft's startup program "Microsoft for Startups." Lazuli will leverage the resources provided by the program and, through this partnership, build "NINJA DB" on Azure, which is widely used in the retail sector, and provide it as SaaS (software as a service). Specifically, in collaboration with engineers from Microsoft Japan, Lazuli will progressively and rapidly implement storage of SKU information data*(2), a customer database construction template, and customer data construction services, as well as the construction of "NINJA DB" on Azure. Based on these efforts, aiming for June, Lazuli will implement a general-purpose NINJA DB SaaS on Azure and jointly conduct sales promotion activities.

Through its collaboration with Microsoft, Lazuli is expanding service provision to customers in the retail sector and actively supporting customers' digital shift in order to deepen customer understanding through data, improve customer experience, and further enhance corporate value.

• (1) What is NINJA DB?
  "NINJA DB," developed and provided by Lazuli, uses AI technology to collect, organize, and enrich product information from around the world, and provides product information in a SaaS cloud product master that is easy for anyone to use. As of November 2020, it stores approximately 27 million products and 6.4 million products with JAN codes, among the top level in Japan, and Lazuli plans to continue expanding the number of products stored.

• (2) What is SKU?
  SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit, and refers to the smallest management unit used when handling order placement, ordering, and inventory management.

＜About Lazuli＞

Lazuli is a startup founded in July 2020. By leveraging advanced AI technology and the cloud, it is developing and providing a SaaS product that allows anyone involved in business to use product information from around the world as an AI product master. In the process of products being manufactured, distributed, and sold, product-related data is not smoothly synchronized between companies or even within a company. We believe this is one of the major factors hindering DX. To solve this, Lazuli develops and provides NINJA DB, a SaaS cloud product master that enables people involved in business to easily access product information.

*The name "Lazuli," its logo, and the product and service names listed are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lazuli. Unauthorized copying and reproduction are prohibited.

＜About "Microsoft for Startups"＞
Microsoft operates the startup support program "Microsoft for Startups" in more than 140 countries around the world, and for startup companies selected for the program, it provides support for technologies including Azure, as well as dedicated resources suited for business expansion that leverage its partner network.