Best Road Transport Tech Companies in Japan
The 40 best Road Transport Tech companies in Japan in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: Dynamic Map Platform.
Our analysis of 99 Road Transport Tech companies
$54.1b in tracked funding; 86% of the stack-profiled cohort runs cloud-native; funding activity peaked in 2024.
Ranked: Best Road Transport Tech companies in Japan
| # | Company | Disclosed funding | Last round | Stage | Founder | Founded | App-install YoY | Patents & IP focus | Recent signals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dynamic Map Platform Mapping solutions for autonomous vehicles | $195M | 90 mo ago | Public | Tsutomu Nakajima CEO & President | 2016 | — | 14 patents Patents concentrated in computing, sensing & instrumentation | 1 launch |
| 2 | Luup App-based platform form electric kick scooters | $88M | 22 mo ago | Series C | Ryotaro Makita Chief Product Officer / Chief Operating Officer / Co-founder | 2018 | +48% | 4 patents Patents concentrated in computing, sensing & instrumentation | — |
| 3 | JapanTaxi App-based on-demand taxi-hailing service | $87M | 96 mo ago | Deadpooled | Kazuro Kawage CEO | 1977 | — | 10 patents Real-time demand forecasting display interfaces for taxi dispatch and fleet management. | — |
| 4 | Nealle SaaS-based provider of parking management solutions | $43M | 24 mo ago | Series B | Yota Sato Founder & CEO | 2013 | — | — | — |
| 5 | nearMe App-based carpooling solution | $11M | 23 mo ago | Series C | Koichiro Takahara Ceo | 2017 | +42% | 11 patents Location-based services and dynamic regional operation planning for mobile network applications. | — |
| 6 | SmartDrive Analytics platform for transportation | $9M | 112 mo ago | Public | Retsu Kitagawa CEO | 2013 | — | 12 patents AI-based vehicle behavior monitoring and data analytics for autonomous mobility systems | — |
| 7 | Smart Ryde Online platform offering taxi-hailing services for airport transfers | $2M | 59 mo ago | Series A | — | 2017 | — | — | — |
| 8 | busket Tech-enabled platform offering operations management solutions | $1M | 26 mo ago | Seed | Hidekazu Nishikido CEO | 2016 | — | — | — |
Top 12 Road Transport Tech companies in Japan
#1
Series C · Shibuya, Tokyo · founded 2018 · 37 employees$87.9Mraised▾
App-based platform for electric kick scooters. Through the app, users can find and book electric kick scooters. Also, they can navigate to the nearby bike stations to get the scooters. Users can unlock the scooters by scanning the QR code. It offers station-based service users have to leave the scooter at the nearby docks at the end of the ride.
- Oct 2024Conventional Debt$20M
- Apr 2023Conventional Debt$5.2M
- Apr 2023Series C$28.3M
- Apr 2022Series B—
#2
Series C · Chiyoda City, Tokyo · founded 2017 · 7 employees$11Mraised▾
App-based carpooling solution. The app matches passengers and car drivers who are traveling in the same direction to share a ride or commute. The app also devises the shared route and calculated each pooler's expenditure. Its mobile app is available for iOS and Android devices.
- Sep 2024Series C—
- Jun 2024Series C$3.1M
- Mar 2023Series B—
- Dec 2022Series B$5.1M
#3
Series B · Chuo City, Tokyo · founded 2013 · 140 employees$43Mraised▾
SaaS-based provider of parking management solutions. The platform offers solutions like the collection of monthly usage fees after the contract, remittance, customer management, and more. Customers can search parking lots, book them, cancel them, renew them, and more.
- Aug 2024Series B$31.1M
- Aug 2023Series A$11.9M
- Apr 2022Seed—
#4
Public · Tokyo, Tokyo · founded 2016 · 274 employees$195.4Mraised▾
Mapping solutions for autonomous vehicles. The platform offers solutions to collect the data from satellites, generates point clouds leveraging mobile mapping systems, plots geographical objects from point clouds, and integrates the data to create 3D maps.
- Feb 2019Series B$18.1M
- Jun 2017Series B$32M
#5
Deadpooled · Tokyo, Tokyo · founded 1977 · 10 employees$86.9Mraised▾
AI/Machine Learming based mobility platform company - Taxi dispatch app with accumulative downloads of approximately 4 million, which is the top share among taxi-dispatch apps in Japan. Approximately 60,000 taxis — about one-fourth of all taxis in Japan — are registered with the service provided by the app - Integrated software-hardware platform for enhancing the overall taxi-user experience and advancing the digitalization of taxi operators
#6
Seed · Meguro City, Tokyo · founded 2016$1.3Mraised▾
Tech-enabled platform offering operations management solutions. The company offers dispatch and operations management solutions. It offers features like collective management for document management, itinerary management, price estimation solutions, etc.
- Jun 2024Seed$1.3M
#7
Public · Minato City, Tokyo · founded 2013 · 73 employees$9Mraised▾
SmartDrive provides analytical insights by gathering real-time data from the sensors which are used in the vehicle and process those data to provide predictive analytics to enhance the efficiency of transportation. SmartDrive provides analytics on transportation like elderly driving monitoring, driver safety, and vehicle management, sensor data, etc.
- Apr 2017Series B$9M
- 2015Series A—
- Seed—
#8
Series A · Minato City, Tokyo · founded 2017 · 30 employees$1.6Mraised▾
Online platform offering taxi-hailing services for airport transfers. The platform enables users to book taxi services for airport transfers. It offers features like variant payment options, verified drivers, cancellation services, etc.
- Oct 2021Series A$1.6M
#9
Series C · Nagoya, Aichi · founded 2019—raised▾
Online platform offering car sharing and rental services. The platform enables users to find and book cars of their preferences. Also, vehicle owners, can list their, available cars on the platform and claims to get monetized from it. Users can also sell their vehicles on the platform.
- Feb 2026Series C—
#10
Seed · Minato, Tokyo · founded 2022—raised▾
Provider of parking management solutions for parking operators. The platform offers solutions like operations management, payment solutions, maintenance, and more.
- Aug 2024Seed—
- Jul 2023Seed—
#11
Series A · Meguro City, Tokyo · founded 2020—raised▾
AI-driven smart urban management solution for road transport companies. Products include RoadInspectionAI (it detects road damage points & improve work efficiency) & BridgeInspection. Their solution enables real-time, quantitative road inspection with smartphones & dashcams.
- Apr 2022Series A—
- Oct 2020Seed—
#12
Seed · Shibuya, Tokyo · founded 2011—raised▾
CogiCogi is an app-based electric bicycle rental service in select Japanese locations. The app enables users to locate an available electric bicycle in their vicinity, unlock/lock it scanning its respective QR code and book on-demand rentals. Users are required to return the bikes to one of the stations. Its mobile app is available for iOS and Android devices.
- Jun 2016Seed—
Funding & investor landscape
Notable founders
Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage
Share of Road Transport Tech coverage by sub-theme.
Regulatory-risk over time rising
Funding & growth over time
funding rising · growth rising
How research on Autonomous Vehicles is moving in Japan
A read on the academic research around Autonomous Vehicles — which themes are gaining ground, the institutions and researchers driving them, and how the tone is shifting. Based on 445 Japan-affiliated papers.
- The University of Tokyo59
- Korea University22
- Nagoya University21
- Waseda University16
- National Institute of Informatics13
- Trajectory1→10
- Computer vision2→10
- Segmentation1→6
- Convolutional neural network1→5
- Context (archaeology)1→5
- Human–computer interaction1→17
- Computer vision6→18
- Transport engineering1→13
- Field (mathematics)3→11
- Simulation1→7
- Transport engineering7
- Human–computer interaction6
- Key (lock)6
- Cadastre5
- Humanities5
Where autonomous vehicles is researched across Japan
Location clusters by institution affiliation — each city's volume, stance tone, and a quick read on its hot topic, what's advancing, the opening opportunity, and the main concern.
Who's filing autonomous vehicles patents in Japan
Japan autonomous vehicles patent filing is accelerating — 1,667 filings from 356 assignees (2016–2025), led by Toyota, Honda, Yamaha Motor; annual filings 142→145.
- Toyota658
- Honda226
- Yamaha Motor218
- Denso82
- Mitsubishi Electric79
- Nissan Motor53
- Takeda Pharmaceuticals31
- Chugai Pharmaceutical28
Common questions
Rohit lives in the feed. He covers what's moving right now — the funding rounds, launches and shifts breaking across the trade press — and ties them back to where the sector is heading.