NanoFrontier Wins 3rd Place in 'GENIAC-PRIZE', Securing 30 Million Yen

NanoFrontier Wins 3rd Place and Regional Award in NEDO’s ‘GENIAC-PRIZE’ Program

NanoFrontier Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture; Representative Director: Seiya Inoue, hereinafter “NanoFrontier”) won the 3rd place (30 million yen prize) and the Regional Award (2.5 million yen prize) in Domain 01 “Development of AI Agents for Solving Social Issues Using Domestic Foundation Models, etc.” Theme I “Formalization of Tacit Knowledge in Manufacturing” at the final evaluation and award ceremony of NEDO’s prize-based program “GENIAC-PRIZE” held on March 24, 2026.

Background of the Award

In Japanese manufacturing, the tacit knowledge of skilled technicians, such as “hand-feel” and “visual judgment” cultivated through years of experience, is being lost without being passed on to the next generation. Nanoparticle development by startups faces a triple challenge of “human dependence, reproducibility, and talent shortage,” making it extremely difficult to streamline material exploration using versatile nanoparticles and scale up research and development. This has led to a structural problem where responses to various serious social issues through material development have been delayed.

• Tacit Knowledge of Know-how The nanoparticle generation process depends on numerous conditions such as temperature, stirring, and timing of chemical addition, making success dependent on skilled researchers’ “intuition and knack”

• Poor Experimental Reproducibility Manual experiments have large operational variations and limited physical trial counts, making it difficult to search for highly reproducible generation conditions

• Talent Shortage in Regional Startups For regional startups with small teams immediately after founding, securing excellent researchers is extremely challenging

NanoFrontier has constructed a research and development automation system that reproduces skilled researchers’ tacit knowledge (intuition and knack) in nanoparticle generation using AI. This system integrates AI agent experiment proposals, raw material exploration through simulation, automatic recording with smart glasses, and material evaluation with robotic arms as a series of pipelines.

CEO’s Comment

“We are deeply honored by this award. We have been working on both materials science and AI development within a single company, designing the research and development process itself with AI in mind from the beginning, rather than retrofitting AI to existing manufacturing flows. We are pleased that the judges appreciated our vision of transforming materials development, which has relied on skilled researchers’ ‘tacit knowledge’, into a data-driven approach through AI agents and robotics. Building on this achievement, we will continue to accelerate solutions to social issues, including PFAS countermeasures, and further challenge ourselves to strengthen Japan’s manufacturing competitiveness.”

(Seiya Inoue, Representative Director)

About GENIAC-PRIZE

GENIAC-PRIZE is a NEDO prize-based program (NEDO Challenge) with a total prize of about 800 million yen, targeting four themes in three domains: social issues, government agencies, and safety, where solutions through generative AI services are desired. It aims to accelerate the utilization and social implementation of generative AI applications by promoting development and demonstration by diverse entities from various regions.

Official website: https://geniac-prize.nedo.go.jp/

[List of Themes] Social Issues: Development of AI Agents for Solving Social Issues Using Domestic Foundation Models, etc. 　I. Formalization of Tacit Knowledge in Manufacturing (hereinafter, Manufacturing) 　II. Improving Productivity in Customer Support (hereinafter, CS) Government Agencies: Development of Generative AI Contributing to Efficiency in Review Processes, etc., in Government Agencies Safety: Development of Risk Exploration and Risk Reduction Technologies for Ensuring the Safety of Generative AI

About the Award Results

This time, a total of 42 prize winners were selected from 192 applications: 114 in the Social Issues domain (Manufacturing: 58, CS: 56), 37 in the Government Agencies domain, and 41 in the Safety domain. While winners were determined in the Social Issues and Safety domains, there were no winners for 1st to 3rd place in the Government Agencies domain according to the award criteria set by this project.

1st to 3rd Place Winners in Theme I (Manufacturing)

Rank and Prize	Winner	Entry Content
1st Place 50 million yen	Daikin Industries, Ltd. / Fairy Devices Inc.	Development of AI agents to support workers in place of skilled technicians
2nd Place 40 million yen	Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. / Algomatic Inc.	Formalization of tacit knowledge through a “comparison” approach of work videos between skilled and unskilled workers, using TIG welding technology as an example
3rd Place 30 million yen	NanoFrontier Co., Ltd.	Experiment automation utilizing LLM

Company Profile

• Company Name: NanoFrontier Co., Ltd.
• Representative: Seiya Inoue, Representative Director
• Address: Room 215, Material Solutions Center (MaSC), Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai-shi, Miyagi Prefecture
• Established: April 7, 2025
• Business Activities:
  • R&D, manufacturing, and sales of reagents and functional materials using organic nanoparticle technologies
  • Contract manufacturing of organic nanoparticles and provision of related technologies
  • Technology licensing and consulting in the field of organic nanoparticle technologies
• Website: https://nanofrontier.jp