There’s a certain momentum building across Northeast Asia’s startup scene that feels less like isolated national growth and more like an ecosystem quietly stitching itself together, and this year’s Tokyo Unicorn Summit at SusHi Tech Tokyo made that pretty visible. The forum, hosted by Startup Island TAIWAN under Taiwan’s National Development Council, returned for its second consecutive year with a noticeably broader footprint, pulling in participants not just from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, but also unicorn-stage startups from Singapore and Vietnam. It had that slightly dense, high-energy conference atmosphere where every conversation seems to orbit around capital flows, AI infrastructure, and who’s going to scale next, though in a very practical, almost understated way rather than hype-heavy spectacle.
One of the more striking signals came from the opening remarks by James Ryu, Chairman of the AI Committee at SK Group, who framed the discussion around how tightly international capital is now interwoven with AI supply chains. It wasn’t presented as a future prediction so much as a current operating reality, which set the tone for the rest of the summit. Around that framing, Startup Island TAIWAN leaned into what it’s been building internationally, highlighting the performance of its overseas hubs in Tokyo and Silicon Valley, along with its newer South Korean presence, almost like a quiet inventory check of how far its connectivity strategy has come.
A key part of the narrative centered on Taiwan’s “Next Big” program, positioned as a structured pipeline for scaling startups into global outcomes, including listings and exits. That angle was reinforced by Kao Li-ling, CFO of 91APP, who discussed where AI and SaaS might realistically intersect in the next phase of growth, along with how M&A strategy is becoming less of a milestone and more of an ongoing mechanism in fast-scaling companies. There’s a subtle shift there, from “building startups” to “designing exit-ready systems,” which came up a few times in different forms.
On the capital markets side, Kao Pei-ching from the Taiwan Stock Exchange went into how Taiwan’s institutional structure is evolving to better support international startups, particularly through platforms like TIB, which are increasingly being framed as entry points for regional listing rather than purely domestic fundraising tools. It’s a quiet but important repositioning, and it seemed aimed at signaling that Taiwan is trying to be more than just a launchpad—it wants to be a landing zone for capital realization as well.
Media and ecosystem connectivity also played a surprisingly active role in the discussion. Sung Ho-cheol, Tokyo bureau chief of Chosun Ilbo, noted that the collaboration with Startup Island TAIWAN has helped Korean companies and investors better understand Taiwan’s startup landscape, which might sound procedural at first glance, but in practice that kind of narrative bridging often matters more than people admit. Once those mental maps form, partnerships tend to follow more naturally.
What stood out overall was how dense the investor and corporate presence was, with names like Naver, Kakao, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mori Building, LB Investment, and DG Daiwa Ventures all orbiting the same space, alongside traditional industrial and financial players. It gave the impression of a region where venture capital, corporate strategy, and national innovation policy are increasingly overlapping rather than operating in separate lanes.
If anything, the summit felt less like a showcase and more like a coordination point, where Taiwan is trying to position itself not just as a startup origin market, but as a connector between capital, AI infrastructure, and regional expansion paths. Not perfectly linear, not fully resolved yet, but clearly moving in that direction.
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