Sakana AI to Develop Advanced AI for Asset Consulting in Partnership with Daiwa Securities Group

Sakana AI, the Tokyo-based lab known for its unconventional 'AI Scientist' agent work, has signed a long-term partnership with Daiwa Securities, part of the Daiwa Securities Group. It's the first time Sakana has struck a deal with a brokerage, and the timing says a lot about where the company wants to go next: out of research papers and into the pockets of ordinary investors.

The two companies plan to build what they're calling a 'total asset consulting platform,' using models Sakana has developed in-house to help Daiwa's advisors look at a client's entire financial picture rather than a single account or product. The stated goal is personalization at a scale that wasn't really possible before — treating a wealthy family office client and a twenty-something just starting to save with the same level of tailored attention, just calibrated differently.

This fits a pattern Daiwa has been chasing for a while. The firm has already been shifting from a transaction-driven brokerage model toward asset management consulting, and its current mid-term business plan names 'digital innovation' as one of its core pillars. Bringing in outside AI talent rather than building everything internally is a pragmatic move, especially against competitors also racing to bolt AI onto wealth management.

For Sakana, the deal marks a deliberate push into finance after building relationships across the industry over the past year or so. The company has leaned heavily on its agent-design research, and this partnership is presented as proof that those techniques can solve real business problems, not just win benchmarks. A joint working group will now handle the actual system development, rolling things out in stages rather than promising a big-bang launch.

No dollar figures, timelines, or product names were disclosed, which makes it hard to judge how substantial this is beyond the press-release language. But a serious Japanese brokerage handing its consulting playbook to an AI startup, rather than a Big Tech vendor, is notable on its own — and worth watching as the platform actually starts shipping.