Nobuhiko Suzuki is the co-founder and CEO of AI Communis. Their AI-powered translation software, Auris AI, makes your content accessible worldwide by automatically creating transcripts and subtitles from audio and video files. 

Auris currently has 300,000 users, and mostly specializes in translating Asian languages. The startup raised a $1.3M seed last November. 

‍

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

We make your content accessible to the world, especially to Southeast Asia. If you are content holders, we will help you reach a global or SEA audience. If you are a consumer, we will help you enjoy the content in your native language.

‍

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

About myself. Every cloud has a silver lining. After working in the financial industry for 17 years, I started my company.

But our initial business idea to use AI for the financial industry was NOT so successful, so I used our AI for another way, that is, transcription, translation and subtitling for our living, leading to the very initial idea of our software.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. I am from rural Nara, Japan. When I was in elementary school, I used to run around in nature, get muddy in the Japanese rice fields, and look at each and every creature and plant indigenous to Japan as my own personal curiosity took me. 

Even now, I am still honest with myself about new things.

About my company. Our software is simple and easy to use, but behind the scenes, we deploy cutting-edge AI functionality like speech-to-text and natural-language processing. Our goal is to smoothly integrate the technologies to make our lives easier.

‍

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

I was a managing director of Japan Post Capital, covering AI, agri-tech, and prop tech. Back then, I encountered a unique AI startup using Carnegie Mellon University ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) engine.

Even though I did not invest in the company, I got very along well with their then CTO. And with him, we co-founded AI Communis in 2021.

If I had not met him, I would not have chosen a startup life.

‍

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

We expect generative AI, which is currently booming, to enter the B2B arena after clearing the enterprise-level requirement because fine-tuned models using data specific to each vertical will solve industry-specific problems. 

We are going to specialize in the localization industry.

‍

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

Every day now we see the names of large language models like ChatGPT in the news and in articles. But I believe that 9 to 12 months from now, the hype will end, followed by the LLM winter period. 

This is the same as the boom in Web3. But the approach of using cutting-edge technology to solve the problems of this world is timelessly useful and believable. 

I am saying this because we have weathered the AI winter of the last few years (my co-founder has been working on AI for over 20 years!) ), and we are now in the midst of the current AI boom.

Even under tough situations, together, we can solve our users' pain points and make the world an even better place!

‍

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

The localization industry and how we can use AI in this industry. 

‍

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988) It is a very old movie, but I still watch it when I need to refresh my mind. I would like everyone to see the stunning ending scene.

‍

🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Mango!

‍

FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.