Rakuten announces November AI technology conference in Tokyo
The November 14 event will take place at Rakuten Crimson House, the company says.
Rakuten will hold its renamed AI Technology Conference at its Tokyo headquarters on November 14, placing agentic AI, cloud infrastructure and data science at the centre of the event’s 18th edition.
The company announced the plans on October 22. Registration is free and open to the public through the official event website, with most sessions expected to be conducted in English.
Agentic AI leads the programme
The announced speakers include Rakuten Chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani, Chief AI and Data Officer Ting Cai and Google Cloud’s Richard Seroter. Talks and panels are planned across e-commerce, financial technology, mobile services and other parts of the technology business.
Agentic AI refers broadly to systems capable of carrying out sequences of tasks rather than simply answering one prompt. That creates questions about oversight, permissions and reliability alongside potential efficiency gains.
The programme identifies those discussion areas; it is not an announcement that every system being discussed is ready for general use. Product demonstrations and commercial releases will need to be assessed separately.
The guest list also includes CrowdStrike Japan technology strategist Kazunori Furusawa, alongside Rakuten leaders responsible for security, data and cloud platforms.
Demonstrations and family activities
Alongside the technical sessions, Rakuten plans hands-on AI booths and a Kids Park. The announcement uses photographs of the 2025 Kids Park to illustrate the family activities, rather than showing a 2026 event that has not yet taken place.
The schedule runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Rakuten Crimson House in Setagaya, Tokyo. Visitors should confirm registration availability and the latest timetable before arranging travel, as speakers and sessions can change.
Business applications and risk share the agenda
Rakuten’s published theme, AI-nization: Enhance & Augment, frames the programme around expanding what people and organisations can do. The planned discussions span cloud computing, data science, e-commerce, financial technology and mobile services, combining infrastructure questions with applications across the company’s businesses.
Ting Cai is scheduled to outline Rakuten’s latest AI use cases and its vision for agentic systems. Taku Okoshi, who leads the company’s AI services function, is also due to join Richard Seroter for a discussion about agentic AI’s role in society and how companies can use generative AI. Those sessions could provide more detail about where automation is being deployed and where oversight remains necessary.
The event is also scheduled to conclude with the Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards, recognising people and organisations using technology for societal innovation. The organiser lists refreshments and a free-admission after-party alongside the formal programme. Together with the family activities, those plans make it a broader community event rather than only a sequence of product presentations. The final speaker list and timetable remain subject to change before November 14.
What the new name signals
Adding AI to the conference title reflects the role Rakuten wants the technology to play across its businesses. The event offers a view of those priorities, but an organiser’s presentation is not independent evidence of a product’s performance or safety.
The most useful announcements will be those accompanied by demonstrations, clear limits and concrete availability dates. For now, the news is the November programme—not remarks already delivered or products already tested on the conference floor.
