Kohtaro Horie

COO at Gen-AI startup / Trilingual(Japanese, English, Chinese普通话)

Greater Tokyo Area

About

Cross-border GenAI operator building enterprise AI businesses from zero — across Japan, China, and beyond. As COO of Sparticle (a GenAI startup founded by a Xiaomi co-founder), spearheading enterprise sales and strategic partnerships in Japan — translating cutting-edge Chinese AI into business value for Japanese corporations — including: - Lumine Group (NEWoMan Takanawa) — co-developed Japan's first GenAI deployment in a commercial facility; a RAG-based multilingual AI assistant "GBase SUPPORT" handling real-time visitor queries across 170+ stores - Shimizu Corporation — built a zero-to-one enterprise AI partnership spanning multiple internal DX initiatives; including multimodal LLM applications in construction, such as automating building drawing inspection using vision-language models and image segmentation (presented at IPSJ National Convention 2025) - Additional enterprise clients across life insurance, energy, printing, and travel industries Before Sparticle: founded a Japan-China venture builder (BEAKS Inc.) and advised top-tier Japanese OEMs at Monitor Deloitte. Trilingual: Japanese (native) · Chinese (business) · English (business) Open to conversations about GenAI go-to-market, Japan market entry, or cross-border partnerships.

Experience

  • 最高AI責任者 at Venture Client Inc.
    Jun 2026 - Present · 2 mos

  • Chief Operating Officer at Sparticle Inc.
    Dec 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 8 mos

  • Founder and CEO at Beaks
    Jul 2019 - Dec 2023 · 4 yrs 6 mos

    Beaks is a Shanghai-based venture builder, especially focusing on cross-border opportunities between China and Japan. Build joint venture with partners, SME mainly, to explore overseas markets. Provide market entry consulting and business development.

  • Manager of JV investment / Industrea at REAPRA PTE. LTD.
    Jan 2017 - Jun 2019 · 2 yrs 6 mos

    Venture builder focusing on new business development consultation and investment in Japan and South East Asia

  • Strategy & Operation at Monitor Deloitte
    Apr 2012 - Dec 2016 · 4 yrs 9 mos

    Strategy consulting focusing on Growth strategy and Market entry strategy in Japan and China