SmartNews Establishes "AI Transformation Division" to Overhaul Company Operations with an AI-First Approach

SmartNews, Inc. (Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director, President & CEO: Kaisei Hamamoto), whose mission is to deliver high-quality information from around the world to those who need it, has established the "AI Transformation Division," a new organization to transform company operations with an AI-first approach. This division will operate as part of the Business & Operations domain, responsible for business, product, and engineering, and will integrate these areas to build a company-wide AI utilization infrastructure.

Background and Main Roles of the "AI Transformation Division" Establishment

1. Building a Company-Wide AI Utilization Infrastructure Integrating Business, Product, and Engineering

The "AI Transformation Division" will establish a company-wide AI utilization infrastructure to enable all employees and organizations to use AI safely and effectively. It will work across business, product, and engineering to develop an integrated AI utilization infrastructure, an AI Control Plane, that handles the efficiency of AI-powered development platforms, the common infrastructure for business agents, authentication and authorization management, and cost management. Concurrently, it will create mechanisms to safely connect internal information and business tools with AI, balancing the speed and safety of AI utilization.

2. Democratizing Product Development and Business Improvement through AI

SmartNews is working to create an environment where all employees, including non-engineers, can utilize AI in product development and daily operations, rather than limiting AI to a select group of specialists and engineers. Through the company-wide deployment and setup of AI tools, including Claude Code, the "AI Transformation Division" will support each employee in utilizing AI according to their specific work challenges, enabling them to improve operations and create prototypes.

Comment from SmartNews Representative Director, President & CEO Kaisei Hamamoto

"The evolution of generative AI requires companies to not only improve operational efficiency but also to rethink their work processes and organizational structures. For SmartNews, AI Transformation is a management challenge to deliver faster and greater value to society. Through the establishment of the "AI Transformation Division," we will evolve into a company where each employee can think, act, and produce results with AI as a premise. We will continue to build a company befitting the AI era to achieve our mission of delivering high-quality information from around the world to those who need it."

Moving forward, we will continue to communicate our transformation to AI-first company operations by sequentially sharing specific initiatives through the AI Transformation Division and utilization examples from each department.