OMRON Ventures

OMRON Ventures Co., Ltd. is the corporate venture capital arm of OMRON Corporation — Japan's TSE-listed industrial automation and healthcare technology conglomerate — founded in July 2014 and headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo. The firm exists to create innovation driven by social needs by investing in and jointly developing with startups worldwide whose original technologies address OMRON's priority social challenges. Thematic focus areas span factory automation and industrial IoT, smart cities, digital and connected-health wearables, mobility, and energy management. OMRON Ventures operates two successive funds: OVC 1st Fund from 2014, which invested in approximately 20 startups across factory automation, healthcare, and smart cities; and OVC 2nd Fund established January 2022, which was certified by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as the first Japanese corporate venture fund exempted from overseas-investment regulations — enabling expanded global deployment. Cumulative fund size across both funds is approximately JPY 15 billion, or roughly $100 million. Across 22 disclosed investments, portfolio companies include LIGHTz, a Skill Transfer AI company for manufacturing that received a Series A investment in May 2025; Sky Labs, a wearable cardiac monitoring company backed in November 2025; HQ Inc.; and avatarin Inc., both invested in February 2025. Vice President Christina Connelly leads the firm's international engagement. OMRON's corporate heritage runs deep: founder Kazuma Tateishi established Kyoto Enterprise Development in 1972, widely regarded as Japan's oldest private venture capital firm. This institutional history, combined with OMRON's active manufacturing and healthcare operations across Asia, the US, and Europe, gives its venture arm privileged visibility into frontier industrial and healthcare technology as a customer, collaborator, and investor simultaneously.