Rakuten opens new research institute in Silicon Valley

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Rakuten Inc said Tuesday it has opened a new branch of its dedicated research and development organization, Rakuten Institute of Technology, at its American headquarters in San Mateo, California.

Rakuten Institute of Technology, which combines creativity and innovation with emerging technologies to fuel the growth of e-commerce, already has research centers located in Tokyo, Paris, Boston and Singapore. The newly formed Rakuten Institute of Technology San Mateo becomes the second such center in the United States and the fifth worldwide.

The Rakuten Institute of Technology San Mateo will focus on the emerging field of Creative AI with the goal of realizing innovative services using advanced technologies. The core areas of research and development will be:

n Practical applied research on deep learning to understand marketing analysis and consumer behavior in the U.S. marketnResearch on natural language processing (NLP) that further promotes the understanding of product information and comprehension of customer product evaluationsnBased on 1 and 2 above, research into Creative AI, in particular its applications in e-commerce, for example in the automatic generation of creatives designed for particular individuals*2 and in automatic generation of product information and marketing content.n

Rakuten said the institute will become a hub for collaboration with West Coast universities and Silicon Valley companies actively engaged in researching internet technologies, while at the same time leveraging AI with the aim of providing services tailored to individuals.