Digital Garage launches Generative AI startup studio in San Francisco
Digital Garage (DG) opened its incubation center, “DG717,” on Market Street in San Francisco in 2013. DG has a strong track record of supporting startups in various web3-related fields, and the business community that DG has built over the past decade has become a landmark in San Francisco as a connecting hub for startups and investors. It has also functioned as a West Coast web3 community base camp for several years.
DG has supported the global expansion of Japanese startups with its “Open Network Lab,” a startup incubation program launched in 2010. DG has also implemented cutting-edge technologies globally, including supporting Twitter’s entry into the Japanese market.
San Francisco’s business ecosystem experienced radical change due to the COVID pandemic. After several years of depopulation, the emergence of startups in the web3 and Generative AI, such as OpenAI, is now transforming San Francisco into a new gateway city for the next-generation tech companies, including those in Silicon Valley.
Amid this significant technological shift, DG launches “GenLab,” a STARTUP STUDIO to support startups that create new value with generative AI and its related technologies, with “DG717” as the center of its activities. The startups in “GenLab” are primarily next-generation entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, and creators who can develop innovative concepts and services using generative AI.
The most outstanding feature of “GenLab” is that its base of operations, “DG717,” is in the center of San Francisco, a city full of people, information, and financial resources. In addition to Hayashi and Ito, co-founders of DG, who have been engaged in fostering various businesses as pioneers of the Internet business in Japan, DG has invited global IT leaders as advisors to support the startups.
Greg Pass, former CTO of Twitter and a key contributor to Cornell Tech, a tech campus on the U.S. East Coast, and Dr. Abdur Chowdhury, Chief Scientist at Twitter, as well as other pioneers in the U.S. tech community, will support startups as advisors. Also, Daniel Riedel, an entrepreneur and expert in the security space, will manage “GenLab” as Executive Director.
Besides, businesses can grow globally through partnerships and fundraising utilizing DG’s global networks and technical support from DG’s research and development organizations, such as “DG Lab” and “DA Lab.” After carefully selecting entrepreneurs for investment, “GenLab” will differentiate itself from others by establishing a unique “GenLab” method that provides financial support and helps them implement their services into society.
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