Summit Program

Trillions sit in corporate balance sheets and LP portfolios — yet the capital stack for impact-driven innovation remains broken. CVCs chase strategic alignment, VCs optimize for returns, and LPs want both but struggle to measure either. This session brings together institutional investors, innovation-ecosystem builders, and fund managers who have collectively backed hundreds of companies across accelerator-to-venture pipelines. They'll unpack what a new LP–corporate–VC alignment model looks like in practice — and why the next wave of outsized returns may come from the deals that also move the needle on climate, health, and inclusion.

AI data centers are projected to consume as much energy as Japan's entire economy by 2030. Meanwhile, fusion startups race toward commercial viability and next-gen fission designs promise safer nuclear. What energy mix can power the intelligent age — and who will finance it?

Food and drinks provided in the Exhibition & Networking Area.

A closed Strategy Dialogue for up to 10 senior leaders exploring the intersection of urban development, real estate investment, mental health, and inclusive design. How does equitable city design — accessibility, mixed-use communities, gender-responsive infrastructure — generate long-term financial and social returns while building mental resilience? Conducted under Chatham House Rules.

Quantum is not a standalone field — it is inseparable from AI and the evolution of compute. As hybrid quantum-classical architectures become the default and AI workloads push hardware beyond Moore's Law, industry leaders must rethink infrastructure strategy. NTT's IOWN photonic initiative, room-temperature optical quantum computing, and quantum-safe cybersecurity are not science experiments — they are the next enterprise compute stack. This Strategy Dialogue brings together leaders at the quantum-AI intersection to map the converging roadmap: how evolving compute paradigms will reshape industry, which sectors will see impact first, and what it means for Japan's position as a global technology leader.

ESG was supposed to be the lingua franca of global capital — shared disclosure regimes, aligned sustainability frameworks, a rising tide of common rules. In 2026 that consensus has fractured. The US is pulling back from DEI and ESG language; the EU is pushing harder with CSRD and SFDR; Japan sits in the middle; and emerging markets increasingly operate on their own terms. Allocators now face a concrete choice: keep the frameworks and lose US deal flow, strip the language and lose European credibility, or find a third approach that keeps impact capital moving when the geopolitics no longer cooperate. This closed-door dialogue brings senior capital allocators into one room to compare what they're doing in practice and design at least one concrete investment approach that can survive the fracture — committable within the next 12 months.

Global sustainability disclosure is at an inflection point. With ISSB standards gaining traction across jurisdictions, the EU recalibrating its CSRD scope, and Japan advancing its own integrated reporting culture, the question is no longer whether to disclose — but how to make disclosure work as a strategic asset. Yet most companies still treat sustainability reporting as a compliance exercise, disconnected from capital allocation, investor engagement, and enterprise value. Meanwhile, pioneering frameworks like impact-weighted accounts are demonstrating that non-financial capital — from environmental impact to human capital — can be quantified, monetized, and embedded into financial decision-making. This closed-door dialogue brings together corporate executives, investors, and practitioners to move beyond the regulatory checklist and explore how sustainability disclosure can actively drive corporate value creation, attract capital, and unlock competitive advantage.

The rules of cross-border innovation investment are being rewritten in real time. The US-Japan $550 billion strategic investment fund is channeling capital into semiconductors, AI, and critical minerals. The EU Chips Act and AI Act are creating new regulatory corridors — and barriers. Japan is quadrupling its AI and semiconductor budget while global investors rediscover Japanese deep tech as an undervalued frontier. For venture investors operating across these three corridors, the old playbook no longer applies. Tariff negotiations shape deal flow. Export controls redraw supply chains. And a persistent "value-quality mismatch" — where Japanese startups with world-class IP attract lower valuations than comparable US peers — creates both opportunity and friction. This Strategy Dialogue brings together investors actively deploying capital across the US, Europe, and Japan to address the questions that matter most: Where is cross-border capital actually flowing? What makes partnerships across these corridors succeed or fail? And in a world of increasing geopolitical fragmentation, is borderless innovation still possible — or do we need a new model?

An evening of candid conversation for speakers, partners, and senior executives. By invitation only. Held at Deloitte Tohmatsu Innovation Park.

Hosted by Intersect Keynote by Charles Hoskinson (joining remotely) — "From Vision to Execution: Midnight, RealFi, and the Future of Cardano's Ecosystem" Cardano is entering a pivotal phase — with Midnight redefining data protection, RealFi bridging blockchain to real-world financial inclusion, and an ecosystem maturing at speed. But bold vision requires disciplined capital. In this closed-door Strategy Dialogue, Charles Hoskinson opens with a 20-minute remote keynote mapping Cardano's strategic horizon. Intersect then walks participants through the 2026 budget lifecycle — how proposals are submitted, how they move through governance, and what on-chain voting looks like under the new Hydra voting layer. The session breaks into three themed discussion pairs: what's working and what isn't in this year's process, the biggest barriers stopping DReps from voting, and what a successful budget cycle looks like by end of 2026. The focus is governance literacy, not the evaluation of any specific proposal. Participants leave with a clearer understanding of how the process works and direct channels to the teams stewarding it. Format: closed roundtable, U-shape layout, Japanese Delegated Representatives and ecosystem participants, bilingual (Japanese/English) with live facilitation. Not a presentation — a working conversation about priorities, trade-offs, and the budget decisions that will shape Cardano's next chapter.

Cardano's onchain treasury holds ₳1.7 billion — the largest community-governed development fund in Web3. This closed-door dialogue, held under Chatham House Rules, brings together Japanese Delegated Representatives for a candid briefing on a pioneering funding vehicle being co-designed with leading UN agencies to position Cardano's treasury as a new class of development donor within the UN system. Participants will hear directly from the Cardano Foundation on the initiative's architecture and status, receive a practitioner perspective from the founder of Plastiks on what UN partnership looks like in practice, and be invited as co-architects — to shape how this proposal moves through governance. This is not a panel. It is a working session.

Social media has created an unprecedented global boom in matcha, the green tea powder at the center of the Japanese tea ceremony and a foundational pillar of Japanese culture. The increase in demand is seeing the kind of hockey stick like growth you might see in tech, and the disruption is causing more bankruptcies in the Japanese tea industry than ever before even as some producers take in record profits. As the gold rush gears up with western brands backed by $100M venture capital fundraising, we take a look at the People-to-People Commerce strategy, an alternative business model proving successful in returning value to the small-scale farmers, factories, and artisans at the heart of the Japanese tea industry. This closed-door Strategy Dialogue convenes operators, investors, and policymakers to interrogate what "People-to-People Commerce" might look like at scale — utilizing social media and emerging AI technology to breach language barriers — redistributing the global craft economy back toward the people who make it possible.

Cardano was founded on three pillars — IOG, the Cardano Foundation, and EMURGO — each shaping a different dimension of the ecosystem. With Charles Hoskinson's remote keynote earlier in the day mapping IOG's horizon, this closed-door AMA brings the Foundation and EMURGO leadership together on the ground in Tokyo for a candid, unscripted hour. Participants are invited to ask anything — from governance, treasury, and protocol direction, to enterprise adoption, tokenization, and global market strategy. No rehearsed decks, no brand lines — just the people stewarding Cardano answering the questions that matter, directly. This session is held under the Chatham House Rule: participants are free to use the information shared, but may not reveal the identity or affiliation of any speaker or participant.