IVS2026 Panel Pitches Real-World Businesses as AI Antithesis
The session highlights a contrarian investment thesis: even as AI dominates, there is growing interest in businesses rooted in physical human needs, from bathing to rice balls.
Reporting from 1 sources: 4Gamer.net.
At the IVS2026 startup conference, a panel explored why entrepreneurs with AI backgrounds are betting on physical-world businesses: lost item recovery, VR experiences, and rice ball shops. Moderator Koki Tanaka framed the session as a return to the real world, an antithesis to the AI trend. Panelists Ryu Wada (find), Tetsuya Ohashi (CinemaLeap), and Miyuki Kawarada (Rice Platformer) each explained their pivot from digital to tangible ventures.
Miyuki Kawarada, who runs the rice ball shop Oni & Co., studied AI machine learning and image recognition at the University of Tokyo. She attended international conferences but lacked confidence in building an AI company from Japan. Instead, she saw an empty category: Japanese fast food. Her company Rice Platformer treats rice balls as a platform for any country's ingredients, much like hamburgers and tacos.
Moderator Koki Tanaka of Incubate Fund opened the session by citing a US bathhouse startup that raised funds with sales of 20 billion yen and a market cap over 100 billion yen. He called the panel a deliberate turn away from the AI trend toward human-specific challenges. The three panelists-Ryu Wada of find (lost items), Tetsuya Ohashi of CinemaLeap (VR experiences), and Kawarada-shared a common thread: choosing the gritty physical world over digital abstraction.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.