Build with Japan

“We think in terms of years, not quarters.” At Japan Go IPO, Coral Capital Founding Partner & CEO James Riney joins General Atlantic VP Anthony Costa and SmartHR Director & CFO Yuji Mori. The four of them break down the deal that sits between them: General Atlantic’s nearly $100M purchase of SmartHR shares from Coral, called the largest venture secondary in Japan’s history. James tells how Coral, which had “bet the farm” on SmartHR through an SPV, planned to sell a third of its stake and ended up selling half. It took no discount, at a time when most secondary buyers were demanding steep ones. Moderator: Jordan Fisher (Founder and Managing Partner, Shiza Ventures) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanfisher/ X: https://x.com/Jordan_J_Fisher Speakers: Anthony Costa (VP, General Atlantic) Yuji Mori (Director and CFO, SmartHR) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuji-mori-b71b74b2/ X: https://x.com/yjmr_1101 James Riney (Founding Partner and CEO, Coral Capital) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesriney/ X: https://x.com/james_riney Chapters: (00:00) Introduction to Japanese Secondaries (02:20) Panel introduction and SmartHR case study (08:02) Why General Atlantic invested in SmartHR (12:44) LP Perspectives and managing management time (18:27) Financial due diligence and deal valuation (26:41) Cap table management and future IPO strategy (30:00) Future blueprint for Japanese secondaries

"Leave it to Silicon Valley to put a sexy name on something that's existed for decades."In the second episode of Build with Japan, Coral Capital Partner Rie Yano and Founding Partner & CEO James Riney go inside Coral's seed bet on Kyoto Fusioneering. It's the "picks-and-shovels" fusion company whose customers include many of the big reactor projects being announced abroad. James tells how Coral landed the deal by writing about fusion before anyone pitched them. The teammate who led the investment loved fusion so much that he ended up joining the company to run it. James also explains why he thinks fusion gets cracked in the 2030s and why Kyoto Fusioneering could become a $10 billion-plus company.Also:• MUFG setting criteria for defense lending, and the nemawashi playbook behind it: government-related capital first, then the megabanks, then everyone else• Why AI startups go global sooner, and why Japan is the largest software market open to American companies (Factory's $200M raise and new Japan GM Seiji Sasaki)• A modern-day oyatoi gaikokujin: James's pitch for Japan to bring in frontier AI researchers, the way Meiji Japan paid foreign experts after Perry's black ships• Japan's immigration reality check: foreign residents up from 1 million to 4 million, a points system, and why tourists (10 million to 40 million) drive most of the backlash• Takahiro Anno's viral "My Shelf Life as an AI Researcher Is One Year," Telexistence's English-first hiring, and CADDi's $1.2B Series D• SIers vs. FDEs: why Japan's system integrators were doing "forward deployment" all along, and why James thinks the pendulum will swing backConnect with us:James Riney:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesriney/https://x.com/james_rineyRie Yano:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rieyano/https://x.com/rieglobe?lang=en Coral Capital: https://coralcap.co/?lang=en

"What happens when the cost of intelligence goes to zero?" Tiffany Kayo is joined by Bilal Zuberi, founder and managing partner of Red Glass Ventures. Bilal has spent 18 years in venture. He was part of General Catalyst's early team, where he helped build its deep tech portfolio, and later backed around 70 companies as a GP at Lux Capital. He then raised a $150M first fund to write first checks into companies at the intersection of AI and the physical world, with LPs including Toyota's Woven Capital and Sojitz Corporation. He shares: How venture turned into a barbell of lottery-ticket seed funds and mega-fund asset allocators, and the missing middle it left behind Why he backs founders he'd still fund if they changed ideas, and how he tells missionaries from mercenaries Why physical AI is much bigger than robots, from software-designed hardware to the intelligence layer on top How he wrote the first check into Nominal at a $5M post, then invested again at $1B Why physical AI startups go global, and come to Japan, much earlier than software companies ever did Connect with Bilal Zuberi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bzuberi/ https://x.com/bznotes Connect with Tiffany Kayo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanykayo/ https://x.com/tiffanykayo If you're working on something ambitious and Building with Japan, we'd love to hear from you! Get in touch with us here: https://coralcap.co/contact/?lang=en

“Things happen slowly in Japan until they don’t.” In the first episode of Build with Japan, Coral Capital Partner Rie Yano sits down with Founding Partner & CEO James Riney to unpack Japan's defense tech awakening. James tells the inside story of how a firm that is "not a defense tech investor per se" ended up helping unwind the decades-old side letter restrictions keeping venture money out of defense, a change he expected to take three years that landed in six months. Also: Why Coral is investing in Defense Inside the 2026 bōei hakusho, and why Japan is adopting AI and drones out of demographic necessity The public vibe shift: Rakuten stepping into defense drones, boycott calls fizzling, and support for strengthening the SDF tripling since 2009 Terra Drone's interceptor drone win Anduril's plan to pour hundreds of millions, maybe billions, into building in Japan Connect with us: James Riney: LinkedIn X Rie Yano: LinkedIn X Coral Capital: https://coralcap.co/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:06 Why We Are Looking at Defense 09:33 The 2026 Defense White Paper 16:37 Rakuten Enters the Defense Sector 20:20 Terra Drone Deep Dive 27:40 Who Should Build Japan's Defense Base? 31:03 Key Players in Japan’s Defense Tech

"How do you use AI to generate anything you want?" That's the question Cristóbal Valenzuela, Co-Founder and CEO of Runway, has spent almost eight years answering, building what has grown from a niche creative tool into a company now expanding into enterprise partnerships and physical AI, backed by a fresh $40M commitment to Japan. In this episode, Cris breaks down why video models are quietly becoming the missing brain behind robotics, and why he believes the next era of AI will be won by companies that can continue to outrun their own success. He shares: How Runway skipped the traditional Japan playbook and still won enterprise deals Why Japan is already Runway's third-largest market Why VLAs struggle to scale, and how world models can become the brains of every robot How some of the biggest AI labs are "storytelling labs" Why Runway aims to reinvent itself every two to three months Connect with Cristóbal Valenzuela: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvalenzuelab/ https://x.com/c_valenzuelab Connect with Tiffany Kayo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanykayo/ https://x.com/tiffanykayo If you're working on something ambitious and Building with Japan, we'd love to hear from you! Get in touch with us here: https://coralcap.co/contact/?lang=en