VUILD Completes New Funding Round, Bringing Total Funding to Approximately 400 Million Yen

VUILD Inc. (“VUILD”) has completed a new round of funding from Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. (“J-POWER”), Mistletoe Japan LLC, individual investors and others. Together with previous investments from LIFULL Co., Ltd. and 株式会社ルートワン・パワー, total funding now amounts to approximately 400 million yen.

Founded in the fall of 2017, VUILD aims to democratize the highly specialized construction industry through digital technology and to realize a world where anyone can make the furniture and buildings they need for daily life by themselves.

Since its founding, as the Japanese distributor of the versatile US-made 3D wood processing machine “ShopBot,” VUILD has sold machines to more than 50 locations across Japan to spread digital fabrication in the country.

In addition, our practice in architecture, which began with “Marebito House,” a contemporary gassho-zukuri dwelling built in Toga Village, Nanto, Toyama, using local forest resources and digital fabrication, has expanded in scale to a large facility planned on the Koganei Campus of Tokyo Gakugei University.

Furthermore, EMARF (*), launched last spring as a platform for ordering customized furniture, has continued to evolve. In the latest version, scheduled for release, we are developing it into a platform tool that connects all CAD (computer-aided design tools) with all digital fabrication machines, so that shapes drawn by professional designers can be output simply by submitting data in the cloud.

VUILD will use the funds raised to advance the development of systems such as EMARF, extend the transformation it has brought to furniture into the field of architecture, and realize a world where anyone can be involved in making things and create with their own hands.

* What is EMARF?
EMARF is a service for wooden parts that make up buildings, such as fittings, interiors, furniture, fixtures and structural components. It directly converts design data from your own CAD (3D/2D) into a form that can actually be manufactured by machine tools, and lets you go all the way to placing a manufacturing order. It removes barriers such as designs that are hard to actually build, or take too much time and cost to make, so that even people without manufacturing equipment or knowledge can easily output what they design, as long as they have CAD data.
https://emarf.co/

▼Message from the CEO
Koki Akiyoshi, CEO, VUILD Inc.

To increase individuals’ “autonomy in making things,” we have so far provided our in-house digital design tool “EMARF” and the digital fabrication machine “ShopBot,” focusing on everyday furniture. Behind this is a question: are we not, in our current lives, simply being “made to live” somewhere by someone else?
We believe that to “live” vibrantly and authentically, it is important to “make” our spaces by our own will. And just as the English words live and build share the same origin, we believe that continually making our homes as “living environments” with our own hands is what it truly means to “live.” Yet today’s housing and cities are merely distributed according to the logic of mass production and do not inspire the agency of the people who live in them.
With this funding, we will open a large digital architecture factory and release an architectural version of EMARF, beginning the democratization of the housing and architecture fields. Rather than fighting alone as a single company, we aim to transform the construction industry by expanding our business broadly in collaboration with our investors, who are our vision partners.

▼Comments from investors
井手一久, Deputy Manager, Corporate Planning Department, J-POWER

For about 70 years, J-POWER has contributed to Japan’s economic development and to improving people’s lives by supplying low-cost, stable electricity and building and operating trunk transmission lines nationwide. Responding to changes in the business environment surrounding energy, we will continue to grow globally through ingenuity, including the introduction of the latest technologies and challenges in new business fields.
Through this investment, together with VUILD, which is using digital technology to transform the construction industry and also working to make use of sustainable domestic forest resources, we will actively work to create autonomous, decentralized infrastructure businesses and new businesses that go beyond the bounds of infrastructure.

Taizo Son, Founder, Mistletoe Japan LLC

What has symbolized the paradigm that has continued unbroken from the 20th century, the “century of industry” built on highly developed science and manufacturing, to the present day? It is the “social division of labor,” in which individuals engage professionally in specific, subdivided occupations. It has become a rigid norm that defines not only how we work, but also how we live and dwell, how we spend our time, and even what our cities look like. But that norm is already outdated and is becoming something that must be reconsidered immediately.
A certain “irresponsibility” inherent in the division of labor, which considers only “partial optimization,” has triggered disorderly development and induced major problems such as climate change that threaten the human sphere of survival. It has also been revealed that, because professions have become too fragmented, people’s ability to survive and the foundations of society have become extremely vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and epidemics. In other words, we are now suffering from the vulnerability inherent in complex societies with a highly developed division of labor.
That is precisely why we now need to reconsider the social division of labor and redesign the paradigm toward a society in which we can live autonomously, in a decentralized way, and richly by ourselves. What VUILD is working on, “democratizing making through digital fabrication,” is in that sense nothing less than an effort for us to regain the power to live. That is the greatest, and only, reason why I and Mistletoe, a collective impact community, support VUILD.

Takashi Inoue, President and CEO, LIFULL Co., Ltd.

Since investing in 2018 shortly after VUILD’s founding, we have collaborated on initiatives such as introducing ShopBot and providing technical support at “LIFULL Fab,” the DIY workshop operated by LIFULL. Through innovative initiatives that leverage VUILD’s advanced technical capabilities, we hope to see VUILD achieve its goals of democratizing housing and architecture and realizing an autonomous, decentralized society.

服部義一, CEO, 株式会社ルートワン・パワー

VUILD, led by Mr. Akiyoshi, is a rare startup that combines the analog (nature) and the digital (IT). We at ルートワン・パワー have a mission to support, with “people, goods, money and information,” companies that take on new social changes and problems and aim to be No. 1, so we invested from the early stage. We are excited, together with VUILD, about its potential as it grows even more powerful.

Masahiro Nakamura (CEO and CCO, tsukuruba Inc.)

Having a background in architecture myself, I have worked to transform the industries of work and living out of a sense of the challenges involved. In VUILD’s approach, I feel hope for industrial transformation that goes beyond new design methods for architecture and cities. In the future VUILD envisions, may there be ever more “true inhabitants” who make their own lives themselves.

[VUILD Inc. (https://vuild.co.jp/)]
Representative: Koki Akiyoshi (CEO)
Founded: November 21, 2017
Head office: unico 1F-A, 3-4 Nisshincho, Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Business: Architectural design, development and manufacturing of wooden products, sales of CNC routers, digital talent development, business development support, IT service development