Kikuvi Closes ¥400M Seed Round Led by Globis Capital Partners
Kikuvi has closed a seed round totaling ¥400 million to accelerate the development and expansion of its AI-driven interview SaaS, "Kikuvi."
The round was led by Globis Capital Partners (GCP), with participation from Plug and Play Japan and Animal Spirits. Angel investors in the round include Riku Sugie (Co-CEO, Mpathy; former CEO, Paidy), Kazuma Yamauchi (Founder & CEO, KZM & Company; former Co-Founder & COO, KonMari Media Inc.), Akira Shibata (Data Scientist), and Yukio Saegusa (CEO, Cool Springs; former CDO, Bridgestone; former CDO, Idemitsu Kosan).
Why Now
Across industries, interviews underpin critical workflows — from hiring and customer research to organizational surveys, consulting, and audits. Yet most remain dependent on face-to-face human conversations, creating persistent challenges in cost, scalability, and consistency of quality.
Kikuvi reinvents the act of "listening" itself with AI, dramatically improving both the depth and speed of interview work across every industry and function. The platform conducts conversational interviews in natural dialogue, then structures and scores responses — making high-quality interviewing accessible to anyone, regardless of individual skill.
Since launch, Kikuvi has seen rapid growth in both customers and revenue, ramping at a pace unusual for an early-stage company. Behind this momentum is a dual-base engineering team spanning Japan and North America, including Kaggle Grandmasters and other world-class engineers advancing the product with global-standard AI capabilities.
Use of Funds
The new capital will focus on four priorities: further advancing the question-generation and follow-up engine at the core of AI interviewing; expanding into new products built on the interview foundation; investing in information security and certifications in preparation for global market entry; and deepening customer success to maximize adoption and outcomes for client organizations.
Message from the Founder & CEO
"Interviews are the starting point of every business decision," said Kento Sato, Founder and CEO of Kikuvi. "But as long as humans conduct them, evaluator bias and resource bottlenecks are unavoidable. Kikuvi reinvents 'listening' with AI to take the quality and speed of interviews to the next level — across hiring, customer understanding, organizational improvement, consulting, and more. We let AI handle structured, systematic interviewing so humans can focus on what only humans can do: empathy, creative judgment, and the insights that emerge from genuine dialogue."
We're Hiring
Kikuvi is actively hiring across engineering, forward-deployed, solutions, and revenue operations roles, including internships. Learn more at https://kikuvi.com/careers.
