Lightblue Inc. Appoints Tsuneo Watanabe as Outside Director

AI startup Lightblue Inc. (Representative Director: Atomu Sonoda, Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, hereinafter "Lightblue") is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe as an Outside Director, effective February 2026. Since its founding in 2018, Lightblue has been addressing corporate challenges through the development and provision of multimodal AI based on image analysis and natural language processing technologies. With an eye on future business expansion and an IPO, we believe that further strengthening our management structure and corporate governance is of paramount importance. Against this backdrop, we have welcomed Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe, who has extensive experience and a proven track record in the M&A domain and has contributed to improving the corporate value of multiple growth companies, as an Outside Director. Going forward, we will leverage his insights to further promote initiatives aimed at business growth and enhancing corporate value. ■ Profile of Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe Tsuneo Watanabe | President and CEO, Spica Consulting Co., Ltd. After experiencing entrepreneurship while studying at Kyoto University, he joined Nihon M&A Center Inc. He led the M&A industry, being featured in Nikkei Veritas as the No. 1 consultant for mid-tier and SME M&A. He is active as a leading expert in industry reorganization M&A. In 2020, he became the youngest board member at the company. He has held directorships at Batonz Co., Ltd. and Japan Investment Fund Co., Ltd. He resigned as a director of Nihon M&A Center Holdings on March 31, 2023. Subsequently, he served as an outside director and advisor for multiple listed and growth companies, contributing to the improvement of corporate value and stock prices. Currently, he serves as an Outside Director of BuySell Technologies Co., Ltd. and CyMed Co., Ltd. In April 2026, he was appointed President and CEO of Spica Consulting Co., Ltd. ■ Comment from Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe I am Tsuneo Watanabe, and I have recently been appointed as an Outside Director of Lightblue Inc. The AI domain is a field that will bring significant changes to future industrial structures and corporate management, and I am greatly attracted to the company's technological capabilities and growth potential. I will leverage my past experience to contribute to the company's further growth and enhancement of corporate value. ■ Comment from Representative Director Atomu Sonoda We feel very encouraged to welcome Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe as an Outside Director. As we work to solve corporate issues through the social implementation of multimodal AI, we are entering a crucial phase where, along with business expansion, building a more sophisticated management and governance structure is essential. Mr. Watanabe possesses a wealth of experience contributing to the growth and corporate value enhancement of many companies, in addition to his extensive track record in the M&A field. We believe he will play an extremely important role in advancing our growth strategy and IPO. [About Lightblue] ■ Lightblue Inc. (https://www.lightblue-tech.com/) Established: January 2018 Representative: Atomu Sonoda, Representative Director Location: CIRCLES Ochanomizu 5F, 2-3-6 Kanda Surugadai, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo Advisor: Fujio Toriumi (Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo) Business: Development of solutions centered on image analysis and natural language processing AI. Corporate AI service "Lightblue" Human-focused image analysis system "Human Sensing" Lightblue's LLM model (Hugging Face link): https://huggingface.co/lightblue/aokarasu-72B About the corporate AI agent service "Lightblue" "Lightblue" is a next-generation AI agent that stays close to the daily operations of employees and staff, supporting a wide range of tasks. It can execute searches, summarization, transcription, and image generation as a one-stop solution, and also allows for the construction of task-specific chatbots without coding. Equipped with strict security for corporations and local governments, anyone can use it with peace of mind. Furthermore, by linking with diverse data sources, it utilizes the unique information held by companies or local governments to quickly and accurately search for necessary information and create documents. It realizes AI utilization tailored to practical work, dramatically improving operational efficiency. Service site: https://www.lightblue-tech.com/lightblue/