Takumasa Okamoto 
Layer8 Inc. is pleased to announce that we have been selected for Support2 of the ICT Startup League, hosted by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC).
About the ICT Startup League
The ICT Startup League is a support program for startups in the ICT field, launched out of MIC’s program for early-stage R&D aimed at startup creation. It combines R&D funding with hands-on support from experts, with the goal of growing the very ecosystem that backs startups.
The program is split into two tracks by business stage. Support1 targets the pre- and early-startup stage, while Support2 — the track we were selected for — is for companies aiming to establish and scale their business. It focuses on R&D toward commercialization and on refining the business plan, and provides R&D funding of up to 20 million yen, fully subsidized (a 100% subsidy rate).
Background of the Selection
Pentesting is a reliable way to demonstrate whether a vulnerability is actually exploitable, but because it depends on specialized experts, it is costly and slow, and only a limited number of companies are able to run it on an ongoing basis. Meanwhile, generative AI is rapidly expanding attackers’ iteration capacity, and the gap in validation frequency keeps widening.
We have been developing technology that uses autonomous AI to raise defenders’ validation capability and transform labor-intensive security assessments. Our goal is to drastically reduce the cost and lead time of pentesting, so that more companies can have their systems validated more frequently. Through the Mirai Vision Award at GENIAC PRIZE and the first field test of our pentest AI agent, we have verified the technical feasibility of this work step by step.
This selection supports us as we advance this R&D into the phase of establishing and scaling it as a business.
What’s Next
With this support, we will accelerate R&D toward commercialization and the validation of our business plan. We will refine the product into something usable in production and bring it to as many companies as possible.
If you are interested in PoCs, technical partnerships, or business collaborations, please feel free to get in touch.
