A Start-up's Evolution from AI Lab to AI Business

For Preferred Networks, building tech for self-driving cars and smart factories is the daily routine. One of its biggest opportunities is to devise a business model that complements its technology. If you live outside Japan or work outside of the machine learning community, you may not have heard of Preferred Networks (PFN). This Tokyo-based start-up has been incrementally realising the potential of AI to reshape the internet of things (IoT) – ever since shifting focus from search engines to deep learning (and dropping its original moniker, Preferred Infrastructure) in 2014. But some of the company's biggest breakthroughs appear modest at first glance.