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 is an experience from my student years. Because of my family's economic circumstances, I felt my own options narrowing. What I came to understand back then was this: no matter how motivated someone is, there's a reality where the "wall" of the system itself stops them from even reaching the starting line.
After entering the workforce, I worked as a financial consultant on many engagements. What I saw on the ground were challengers with remarkable potential who weren't reached by adequate support, simply because of the limits of conventional one-size-fits-all underwriting models and cost structures.
This is no one's fault. It's just that, as the times change, the infrastructure of finance needs a new answer too — that's what I became convinced of.
What UPSIDER offers is not a payment method. With our own AI-driven credit technology, we evaluate a company not by its past, but by the possibility of its future. By letting AI strip away the data wall, we create an environment in which people can step in deeply, accompany each company, and walk alongside its ambition. That is what we mean by "updating credit."
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. A society where every company can believe in its own business and keep challenging — we will keep taking that on, as the infrastructure beneath it, 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 2008 Lehman shock 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.
