【Japan Startup Award 2026】Mujin Wins the Prime Minister's Award, the Grand Prix!
At the Japan Startup Award 2026 held at the Prime Minister's Official Residence, Mujin received the highest honor, the Prime Minister's Award. Read the official rationale, Prime Minister Takaichi's remarks, CEO Issei Takino's full statement, and future roadmap.
On September 25, 2026, at an awards ceremony held at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence, Mujin, Inc. was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award, the highest honor at the Japan Startup Award 2026!
Hosted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and partner ministries, this award recognizes the most impactful startups driving the next generation of innovation. Against the backdrop of Japan designating 2026 as the inaugural “Year of Physical AI” backed by a 10-trillion-yen national strategy, Mujin was selected as a flagship deep-tech mega-unicorn in physical robotics AI.
CEO & Co-founder Issei Takino and Mujin Japan CEO Isamu Arase attended the ceremony, where Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi personally presented the award.
1. Background & Key Evaluation Factors
In the official evaluation, Mujin was recognized for our foundational technical breakthroughs since our founding and proven track record in manufacturing and logistics:
“Recognized for successfully commercializing robot motion planning technology for the first time in the world—a breakthrough considered impossible for 50 years—and developing the proprietary Physical AI ‘MujinMI’. Expected to advance automation across logistics and manufacturing, solving labor shortages and driving industrial productivity.”
Breaking 50-Year Barrier
World-First Deployment
Achieved the world’s first practical implementation of real-time motion planning on industrial robots, overcoming a 50-year engineering bottleneck.
Proprietary Physical AI
Development of MujinMI
Engineered our proprietary Physical AI “MujinMI” to empower industrial machines with autonomous decision-making and environmental adaptation.
Critical Social Impact
Productivity & Labor Relief
Accelerating warehouse and factory automation to resolve critical demographic shortages and uplift industrial productivity.
2. Statements from the Ceremony
Message from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi
“Mujin is advancing the development and implementation of Physical AI to automate logistics and manufacturing floors. In distribution centers where Mujin robots have been introduced, the packing and loading of diverse daily goods tailored to different outbound destinations has been fully automated, significantly increasing operational efficiency. Mujin stands as a role model for the next generation of startups. Congratulations to everyone at Mujin.”
At the award ceremony held at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence, CEO Issei Takino (left) receives the certificate from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (right)
Full Statement from CEO & Co-founder Issei Takino
“Receiving the Prime Minister’s Award, the highest honor at the Japan Startup Award, is a truly humbling milestone. This recognition is the direct fruit of our unwavering commitment to the frontline (Gemba) and the relentless, ground-level dedication of our team, led by my co-founder, world-renowned roboticist Dr. Rosen Diankov, in establishing public industrial infrastructure.
Today, global manufacturing and logistics face unprecedented crises—products cannot be made or shipped due to severe labor shortages and geopolitical disruption. The answer we strive to deliver is our universal intelligent operating system, ‘MujinOS.’ By providing robots with an intelligent ‘brain’ through software while enabling modular hardware upgrades, our mission is to cultivate this platform into the de facto standard of the global industrial market.
Empowered by the massive national momentum of the 10-trillion-yen ‘Year of Physical AI’ initiative, we will humbly yet boldly pioneer global markets alongside our domestic and international corporate partners and global investors. Step by step, we remain committed to establishing Japan-born deep tech as the foundational infrastructure powering real-world physical operations worldwide.“
3. Future Roadmap: Three Core Value Pillars of MujinOS
To address critical global supply chain bottlenecks, Mujin continues to build the “Universal OS” for next-generation industrial infrastructure:
Mathematical Certainty
Deterministic Guardrails
Unlike pure statistical deep learning where 0.1% error rates are fatal in heavy industry, Mujin fuses AI with deterministic mathematical motion planning for zero-incident safety.
Hardware-Agnostic
Capital Efficiency & ROI
Universal interoperability across robot arms, AGVs, and peripheral machinery protects legacy CAPEX and enables modular, incremental automation upgrades.
Global Ecosystem
Tier-1 Partnerships & Capital
Partnering with NVIDIA’s Cosmos Coalition and backed by $400M+ (¥59.6B) from NTT, Qatar Investment Authority, and Accenture, scaling end-to-end facility optimization (MujinWES).
4. A Stellar Group of Co-Awardees
We are honored to have been recognized alongside a fantastic group of startups taking on the challenge of changing the world through Japanese innovation in diverse fields:
- Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award: Regional Fish Institute
- Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Award: Oishii Farm
- Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award: Rapyuta Robotics
- Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Award: Ubie
- Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Award: SkyDrive
- Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Award: Sakana AI
- Minister of Defense Award: Oceanic Constellations
- Jury’s Special Award: Acompany, Iris
Congratulations to all the winning companies!
5. Join Us at the Forefront of Physical AI
Winning the Prime Minister’s Award is not the finish line for us, but merely a checkpoint in our grand mission to “redefine the world’s industrial infrastructure.”
At Mujin, you won’t just write theoretical algorithms. You will experience the thrill of writing code that precisely moves heavy physical machinery, directly solving critical societal challenges.
“We want to hack the physical world through the power of software.”
If you share this burning passion, we are actively hiring software engineers and robotics researchers! If you are even slightly interested in Mujin’s technology or culture, please visit our Teams Hub to learn more about us, and let’s have a casual chat!