TuringNTT DOCOMO Ventures Invests in Turing Inc. , which Aims to Develop Fully Automated Vehicles

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Jun Yasumoto; hereinafter, “NDV”) is pleased to announce that, through a fund that it manages, it has invested in Turing Inc. (Head Office: Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo; CEO : Issei Yamamoto; hereinafter “Turing”), which is developing fully automated (Level 5) vehicles in which the system performs all driving operations.

Turing was co-founded in 2021 by Issei Yamamoto, the developer of Ponanza, the world’s first Shogi AI to defeat a Meijin-level human player, and Shunsuke Suzuki, who received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Computer Engineering and has been engaged in development and research of automated driving systems in the United States.

Currently, various automobile companies and start-ups in Japan and abroad are working on automated driving, but most automated driving systems use a method that controls driving by running a program under a set of predetermined rules. However, it is difficult to define and program every situation as a rule, and at present there are still situations where human intervention is required.
By harnessing “Heron,” a proprietary multimodal generative AI that supports multiple types of data input and output, including text and images, Turing aims to build a system that can ethically handle situations that do not exist in driving data and achieve fully automated driving, which is difficult to achieve with rule-based systems.

In addition to creating synergies with existing businesses, NDV is committed to strengthening its investment in disruptive innovation. We expect this investment to lead to innovation in the mobility business, such as car sharing and ride sharing, and we will use this investment as an opportunity to create new value with NTT DOCOMO and NTT Group.

[Glossary of Terms]
Multimodal: Types of input information (text, images, voice, etc.) are referred to as modes, and the term multimodal refers to AI with the ability to use a combination of these different types of input information.

■Turing Inc. Profile
Name: Turing Inc.
Head Office: 4F Gate City Osaki East Tower, 1-11-2 Osaki, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo
Representative: Issei Yamamoto, CEO
Areas of Business: Development of fully automated vehicles
Website: https://www.turing-motors.com/