The World UPSIDER Envisions
Delivering cutting-edge financial infrastructure to Japan's growth companies.
Integrating payments, credit, and accounting so challengers can focus on what matters.
Create a world-class financial platform that supports challengers.
Build a society where every company that challenges is fairly evaluated.
That is the unchanging mission we carry.
Roughly 70% of Japan's employment is supported by about 3.4 million SMEs. People are refining world-class technology and keeping local economies moving. We believe that accelerating their challenge is what makes Japan stronger.
Yet on the path to growth, financial walls have always stood in the way of challengers. Since our founding, we have kept going after those walls.
We make a company's potential visible through AI-driven credit, and together with financial institutions and partners, we update the financial foundation of this country.
This challenge has no finish line.
Together with every company that challenges, and every partner who supports them — forward.
Toru Miyagi
UPSIDER Holdings, Inc.
Representative Director / President
Top Message
A society where "challenging"
is a choice anyone can make.
My starting point lies in my days as a management consultant. Working with many companies, mostly in the financial domain, I came to see the reality challengers face. People going independent to start their own businesses, companies stepping into new challenges as a new generation takes over, startups aiming for the world from zero. The number of people taking on challenges is steadily growing. And yet many of them were left without the support they needed, because of the limits of one-size-fits-all underwriting models and cost structures. Even the small and medium-sized businesses that sustain most of our employment are no exception.
At the same time, the times have changed. The financial system — credit decisions dependent on people and paper, weighed down by heavy cost structures, once something we could only take as a given — can now be rebuilt from zero through technology. That is exactly why the very infrastructure of finance needs to be remade. I became convinced of this.
UPSIDER evaluates a company not by its past, but by the possibility of its future. Our own AI-driven credit technology strips away the constraints of data, creating an environment in which people can stay close to each company's ambition and walk alongside it. That is what we mean by "updating credit."
And we won't let that evaluation stop at a handful of companies. Low cost, high security, and UI/UX built from the user's point of view — qualities that are usually hard to reconcile, realized at once in our payment products — deliver the value of AI credit to every challenger. Through our own products, and through co-creation with partners who share the same ambition, we will use every means available to turn finance into an accelerator for challenge.
When credit is updated and the walls standing before challengers disappear, each company can unleash its true potential. More people will step into challenges, and that collective momentum will remake the economy itself. That is what we believe.
A society where "challenging" is a choice anyone can make. As the platform for that society, we will keep taking on challenges together with all of you.
Our Challenge
Bring Japan's challenge back onto the world stage.
Japan's companies were once protagonists of the global economy. Today we are taking on a structural turn to regain that momentum — breaking the walls that block challenge, and using technology and finance to build a future where everyone can keep their foot on the accelerator.
A structural disconnect between challengers and supporters.
A structural disconnect has long existed between companies that challenge and those who try to support them. Backwards-looking underwriting that only reads past statements, one-size-fits-all risk evaluation, and enormous administrative cost — companies with extraordinary ambition keep getting stopped by the wall of the system, and their challenge stalls. That is the largest problem we exist to solve.
Why was this disconnect born?
Background 01
Shrinking Workforce
Japan's working-age population fell from 87.16M in 1995 to 73.95M in 2023. Frontline financial and professional services staff supporting SMEs have shrunk significantly over the past 20 years.
Cabinet Office, Annual Report on the Aging Society 2024
Background 02
Aftermath of Financial Crises
Successive SME failures in the 1998 financial crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis forced the government into over JPY 30T of emergency measures. The shock made underwriting standards across the industry far more conservative.
Tokyo Shoko Research, SME Agency
Background 03
Persistent Ultra-Low Rates
SME borrowing rates have fallen for eight consecutive years since 2016. Labor-intensive lending stopped paying off, and the priority of supporting SMEs kept declining.
Tokyo Shoko Research (2025)
And as a result...
Challengers: SMEs / Mid-cap / Startups
Want to challenge, but support doesn't reach them.
Wall 01 · Cash management breaks down
Without accounting staff, even your own financial position is opaque.
Wall 02 · Cannot prove capability
Data isn't ready, so genuine track records never even reach review.
Wall 03 · Capital doesn't flow
Credit doesn't come through, so growth investment stalls when it's needed most.
Structural disconnect
01 · Shrinking Workforce
02 · Aftermath of Financial Crises
03 · Persistent Ultra-Low Rates
Supporters: Banks / Professionals / Investors
Want to support, but cannot step forward.
Wall 01 · Not enough hands
With fewer staff, there's no time to engage with companies one by one.
Wall 02 · Cannot evaluate correctly
Legacy underwriting can't see a growth company's potential, so it's flagged as risk.
Wall 03 · The economics don't work
Returns are too small relative to effort and risk to make support a priority.
Since our founding, we have taken on the challenges behind ①–③.
Vision
A society where challenge is fairly evaluated and accelerates.
What we aim for is a society where a company's future possibility — not just its past — is fairly evaluated.
- More companies pushing growth at full speed, unblocked by capital walls.
- Supporters freed from routine work, able to focus on deeper, higher-value support.
- Challengers and supporters able to connect without structural friction.
Each company is fairly evaluated, and its challenge accelerates. On the other side of that, we build a future in which Japanese companies are once again protagonists of the world.
Strategy
Through AI–human collaboration, make the impossible possible.
UPSIDER has, through the collaboration of AI and people, made possible the support once called impossible. Now we are opening that technical foundation to our partners and accelerating the update of finance itself.
An AI credit model that unlocks potential
Our proprietary AI credit model makes a company's potential visible — and we choose to believe in it. We get in the same boat as the challengers and move forward together. That is what credit means at UPSIDER.
A financial infrastructure co-created with partners
We open our technical foundation to financial institutions and partners — and from there, we build companies that can keep challenging, and a society that supports them.
Direct support through our own products, and evolution of the whole industry through opening our platform. With both wheels turning, we create a new ecosystem with trust at its center.
With everyone who is serious about supporting challenge. Change the structure, and create the future. This challenge has no finish line.
