Japan/spotlight
Aidemy: from undergraduate apps to the Tokyo Stock Exchange
Akihiko Ishikawa started Aidemy as a University of Tokyo undergraduate, abandoned his first products, and listed the company at 30.
Most student startups end quietly, in a group chat. Aidemy, which Akihiko Ishikawa founded while an undergraduate at the University of Tokyo, ended up on the Growth section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It got there only after abandoning what it first built.
The first products failed
Ishikawa enrolled at the University of Tokyo in 2012. In 2014, still an undergraduate, he founded the company that became Aidemy; it was then called Goods Inc. He later took a leave of absence from his studies, returned to the Faculty of Engineering, and then enrolled in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, according to a profile published by the university.
The early products were consumer apps, among them a merchandise recommendation app and a bento preorder app. Neither attracted enough users, and the company withdrew them. On the advice of investors, it turned to AI, and in particular to training people in AI and digital transformation, or DX. Ishikawa told UTokyo Focus: “Learning from my previous failures, I didn’t rigidly adhere to my own ideas.”
The turn to AI education
The company was renamed Aidemy in 2017. Its free course, Aidemy Free, passed 10,000 registrations within 100 days of launch, according to the university’s account. The money followed in two steps: 92 million yen in 2018 from UTEC and other investors, then 830 million yen in 2020 from UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd. and others. Both investors belong to the University of Tokyo’s own startup ecosystem, which the university says has put money into more than half of the entrepreneurs it has profiled.
In June 2023 the company listed on the Growth section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Ishikawa was 30 at the time, and the university says he became the youngest chief executive of a Growth-listed company. Sales for the year to May 2023 were 1.66 billion yen. The profile gives the scale as more than 550 corporate clients, about 260,000 users tutored and about 120 employees. In 2024 the company acquired Fact-real, a website design consultancy.
What is next
The profile describes a second pivot under way: helping companies build their own AI and DX capabilities in-house, through a service called Modeloy, rather than training their staff from outside. Ishikawa’s stated goal is larger. “I’d like to make Aidemy a leading startup in the world,” he said.
Why it matters
Aidemy is a useful case because it is ordinary in its early stumbles and unusual in its ending. A founder who began as an undergraduate, spent years finding a product, and relied on investors tied to his own university is exactly the pattern Japan’s startup policy hopes to multiply. It also shows how long the path can be: from founding in 2014 to listing in 2023 is nine years, which is the headline of the university’s own profile.
The caveat is that the source is the university’s own series, written to promote its ecosystem. The financing and listing facts it gives are specific and checkable, but the account of the founder’s motives is his own. Ishikawa himself credits the university: “I owe a great deal to the University of Tokyo for what I have accomplished.”
