Rakuten Announces Winners of Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards 2026

• Rakuten Group, Inc.

• SHARE ON:
• • Share on Viber
  • Get Viber desktop

Tokyo, November 5, 2026 - Rakuten Group, Inc. today announced the winners of the Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards 2026. The awards will be presented to the winners at Rakuten AI Technology Conference 2026, which will be held on November 14. Details on the annual event can be found on the official site.

The Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards are awarded to individuals or organizations that have contributed to innovation in society through advanced technologies. This year, in the 17^th presentation of the awards, three Excellence Awards will be presented based on the theme of "AI-nization: Enhance & Augment." The theme signifies AI's increasing potential to expand the capabilities of individuals and organizations and empower them to achieve new heights.

Rakuten Technology Excellence Awards 2026 Winners
The Excellence Awards are presented to individuals or organizations in various industries and fields which have promoted the advancement of society through technology.

Winner:
JAI-Trust: Project to Establish Safety and Security Benchmarks for AI in Japan

JAI-Trust was launched in October 2025 with the aim of developing benchmarks and establishing evaluation schemes to ensure the reliability of AI in Japan. A diverse group of experts from industry, academia and government are contributing to this project on a volunteer basis to build a framework for evaluating the safety and security of AI, tailored specifically to the Japanese context. As AI technology becomes deeply integrated into our daily lives and business operations, the dedicated efforts of JAI-Trust contribute significantly to fostering a secure and reliable environment for AI adoption in Japan.

Winner:
Apache Iceberg Community

Apache Iceberg™ has significantly contributed to the development of modern data architecture by establishing a high-performance, open table format^*1 for large-scale analytic data. By solving the inherent limitations of traditional data lakes^*2-such as scalability issues, lack of transaction support, and complex file management-it has been instrumental in realizing the "Data Lakehouse" vision. This technical innovation, achieved by the entire Apache Iceberg™ community, has enabled organizations worldwide to maintain the cost-efficiency of a data lake while achieving the reliability, performance, and structured data management of a data warehouse.

Apache Iceberg™ maintains a vendor-neutral stance and plays a pivotal role in the democratization of advanced data infrastructure. By building an open ecosystem compatible with most major query engines and cloud platforms, it gives organizations the freedom to choose the best tools for their needs and contributes significantly to more agile, data-driven decision-making.

Winner:
Science Tokyo (Okazaki Laboratory & Yokota Laboratory) and AIST

The Okazaki Laboratory and the Yokota Laboratory of the Institute of Science Tokyo, along with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), have made monumental contributions to the development of the open-source Large Language Model (LLM) ecosystem in Japan. By releasing over 132 models and 19 datasets on the open-source AI platform Hugging Face^*3-which have collectively garnered nearly 3 million downloads-they have become a cornerstone of the nation's AI infrastructure. Through the development of high-quality model series such as "Swallow" and the provision of the "Swallow LLM Leaderboard," which serves as a vital benchmark for the industry, the laboratory has consistently led and energized the Japanese AI research community.

Their work delivers immense practical value; numerous organizations, including Rakuten, rely on their outputs for critical model evaluation. Furthermore, the laboratory is a pioneer in "Sovereign AI," conducting groundbreaking research into privacy-preserving technologies that ensure data sovereignty in highly sensitive sectors like medicine and finance.

Selection Committee
Chairman: Mickey Mikitani, Chairman and CEO, Rakuten Group, Inc.
Committee members:
Akihito Kurozumi, Group Executive Vice President, Group CIO (Chief Information Officer) & Group CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Rakuten Group, Inc.
Ting Cai, Group CAIDO, Group Senior Managing Executive Officer of AI & Data Division, Rakuten Group, Inc.
Members of the Rakuten AI Technology Conference Team

Through the annual awards, Rakuten aims to support individuals and organizations that strive to achieve revolutionary advancements in technology and promote innovation.

About Rakuten AI Technology Conference 2026
Date and time: Saturday, November 14, 2026, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. (JST)
*Rakuten Technology Excellence Award 2026 ceremony: 5 p.m. - 6 p.m. (JST)
Location: Rakuten Crimson House (Tokyo Headquarters) (1-14-1 Tamagawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 158-0094)
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/about/map/
Organizer: Rakuten Group, Inc.
Official site: https://tech.rakuten.co.jp/
Event registration page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rakuten-ai-technology-conference-2026-tickets-2000937221092

Notes
*1 Common data storage rules (standards) that are not dependent on any specific system and can be freely used with a variety of analysis tools.
*2 A massive data repository that centrally aggregates and stores all corporate data without processing it.
*3 A platform that allows users to share AI models, datasets, and demo apps.
*Speakers and other information above are accurate as of the time of release and are subject to change in the future. All company names, product names, service names, etc. mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective companies.