On February 14, an award ceremony was held for the 18th Campus Venture Grand Prix National Tournament. We are proud to announce that first-year graduate students from Okayama University Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology NAGASHIMA Yoshiki and MIYAMOTO Taiki were awarded the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Technology Prize for their business plan on Okayama University AI start-up company TechSword.

The students co-founded the company, which offers a no-code Edge AI platform called TechSword Platform that can be used by companies to facilitate an environment where non-engineers with little to no knowledge of machine learning, data science or programming can develop and apply AI. After winning the grand prize at the Chugoku Regional Tournament, the pair were selected to compete in the final selection round for the National Tournament, which took place remotely on January 28.

Mr. Nagashima remarked, “We are extremely pleased that our company’s technical capabilities were so highly evaluated. We will continue working hard to make AI technology more accessible”. It is the second consecutive year that Okayama University students have received such prestigious awards at the Campus Venture Grand Prix National Tournament. Last year, KUBO Shunki (currently in his second year of a master’s program at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences) won the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Award.