Elith Inc. and Buffett Code Inc. Announce Business Partnership

Elith Inc. (Headquarters: 2-27-17 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Frontier Hongo I 6-A; Representative Director: Koki Inoue; hereinafter "Elith"), which specializes in AI safety and security, and Buffett Code Inc. (Headquarters: 1-14-2-301 Aobadai, Meguro-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Tomohiro Fukuda; hereinafter "Buffett Code"), which provides a structured database of corporate information spanning listed and unlisted companies, are pleased to announce the commencement of a business partnership aimed at providing decision-making AI that financial institutions can utilize safely.

As their first initiative, the two companies will jointly develop an "M&A Sourcing AI" for regional financial institutions, private equity (PE) firms, and investment banks.

Background: "Can it be trusted?" and "Is the data prepared?" are the hurdles to AI adoption in financial institutions

While expectations for AI utilization are high in financial institutions, many have not yet achieved advanced operations in core areas such as lending, credit assessment, M&A, and IPO discovery. We believe there are two main reasons for this:

Financial institutions, being regulated industries, are extremely sensitive to risks such as AI misoutputs, information leaks, and accountability. Therefore, "can it be used safely and under control?" is a prerequisite for adoption.

There is insufficient preparation of data that forms the basis of decision-making (especially for unlisted companies, there are persistent challenges such as information not existing, inability to compare, inability to search by quantitative conditions, and inability to detect changes, which are likely to be insufficient to support on-site decision-making).

In addition, regional financial institutions are facing increasing needs for business succession and restructuring among local companies.

According to estimates by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency (SMEA), approximately 2.45 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small businesses will have owners aged 70 or older by 2025, and about half of them are said to have no successor (Source: METI/SMEA). On the other hand, financial institutions face a bottleneck in deal sourcing, with the problem of "not knowing where the deals are."

Objective of the Business Partnership: To simultaneously satisfy "Safety" and "Structured Data"

Even with high-quality AI models and implementation capabilities, companies cannot move forward with core business decision-making unless both (1) governance and security that financial institutions can use with peace of mind, and (2) structured data that forms the basis of decision-making are in place.

This partnership aims to simultaneously address these two requirements using the strengths of both companies, and to AI-enable the core business of financial institutions (lending, credit assessment / M&A / IPO discovery) and on-site operations (corporate sales, retail support) in a safe manner.

・Elith Inc. ── Providing AI Safety / Security Technology

With AI safety, security, and governance as its core strengths, Elith possesses technology for developing AI guardrails for the financial domain. It handles the implementation of AI that can be used with peace of mind even in regulated industries, addressing risks such as AI malfunction, information leakage, and prompt injection. Additionally, it provides FDE (Forward Deploy Engineering) type development capabilities to rapidly iterate on implementation and improvements alongside customers.

・Buffett Code Inc. ── Providing a Corporate Information Data Infrastructure for Financial and M&A Practices

Buffett Code offers a structured corporate information database that spans listed and unlisted companies, including financial information, IR information, business details, monthly employee numbers, 2,393 types of industry classifications, executive information, and corporate relationship data. Its strength lies not just in being a company directory, but in its usability for identifying potential buyers and sellers, initial screening, and organizing proposal hypotheses. It serves as the data infrastructure to answer questions necessary for M&A sourcing, such as "which companies could be potential buyers?" and "which companies could have business synergies?"

Elith Selected for "GENIAC" 4th Term ── Initiatives in Finance x AI Safety Recognized with National Support

Elith has been selected for the 4th term (selected in June 2026) of the "GENIAC (Generative AI Accelerator Challenge)" project, which supports generative AI development, implemented by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (NEDO), with a development theme for AI in finance.

Being a recipient of national support in the field of AI safety and guardrails in the financial sector provides a foundation for the reliability of the "decision-making AI that financial institutions can use safely" that this partnership aims to achieve.

First Solution: "M&A Sourcing AI"

Primarily targeting regional financial institutions, PE firms, and investment banks, this AI will support the following:

・Support for M&A strategy and acquisition policy planning

・Automatic generation of long lists (conditional search using natural language)

For example, extracting candidate companies by combining multiple signals from abstract conditions such as "companies with a high possibility of successor absence, growing in recent years, but with room for improvement in capital efficiency."

・Valuation assistance (transaction/trading multiples)

・Due diligence (DD) assistance

These will be provided on the premise of meeting the security and governance requirements of financial institutions. The aim is to quantitatively and safely support "deal discovery," which has traditionally relied on personal networks and intuition, through structured data and inference AI.

Future Development

Starting with this first initiative, the two companies plan to expand their joint solutions into the following areas:

・Automation of preliminary screening for loan and credit assessment, and continuous monitoring after lending

・Corporate Sales AI (predicting needs for capital investment, M&A consideration, capital efficiency improvement, etc., and enhancing proposals)

・Early discovery of IPO/PO candidates

・Retail sales support and automatic generation of research reports

In all these areas, the differentiation will be based on "safe usability," assuming Elith's guardrail and security technologies, with a view to expanding from regional financial institutions to all financial institutions, including securities and insurance companies.

Representative Comments

Koki Inoue, CEO & CTO, Elith Inc.

"I am extremely honored to be able to partner with Buffett Code. Whether financial institutions can leverage AI in their core business hinges significantly on whether "it can be used safely and in an explainable manner."

With this "M&A Sourcing AI," precisely because it delves into deal discovery, a core revenue-generating activity, we are committed to providing it in a form that controls risks such as misoutputs and information leakage, and can be used with peace of mind even in regulated industries.

Since our founding, we have honed our technology with a focus on AI safety and security. We have been selected for the 4th term of METI/NEDO's "GENIAC" for our AI development theme in finance, and we are focused on delivering mechanisms that allow financial institutions to operate AI safely in their operations, working closely with our clients.

We believe our value lies not only in providing high-performance models but also in ensuring they can operate safely. I am confident that by combining this safety and security technology with Buffett Code's structured data spanning listed and unlisted companies, M&A sourcing for regional financial institutions will advance significantly."

Tomohiro Fukuda, Representative Director, Buffett Code Inc.

"I am extremely honored to be able to partner with Elith. In M&A sourcing for financial institutions, the quality of the data directly determines the quality of the results. This "M&A Sourcing AI" quantitatively and safely reproduces deal discovery, which has relied on personal networks and intuition, through structured data and inference AI.

In the era of generative AI, the differentiator will not be the AI's performance, but whether the underlying data is well-prepared. Since our founding, we have invested significant effort and expertise in structuring vast amounts of corporate data into a form where AI can exert its greatest power.

Our practical applicability is supported by the fact that our members with backgrounds in investment banking and certified public accounting are involved in product development, and that many practitioners in companies engaged in M&A, M&A intermediaries, and FAS utilize it for sourcing purposes.

I am confident that by combining this structured data with Elith's AI agent platform, which excels in financial institution security, AI utilization in financial institution M&A will advance rapidly."

Company Overview

Elith Inc.

・Representative: CEO & CTO Koki Inoue

・Location: 2-27-17 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Frontier Hongo I 6-A

・Business Activities: Research and development of AI safety, security, and governance technologies, provision of AI guardrails, FDE-type AI development and implementation, etc.

・Selected for GENIAC 4th Term (METI/NEDO)

・URL: https://www.elith.ai/

Buffett Code Inc.

・Representative: Representative Director Tomohiro Fukuda

・Location: 1-14-2-301 Aobadai, Meguro-ku, Tokyo

・Business Activities: Provision of the structured corporate information database "Buffett Code" spanning listed and unlisted companies, corporate data API/data solutions, etc.

・URL: https://www.buffett-code.com/

Inquiries Regarding This Matter

Elith Inc. Public Relations

Email: pr-team@elith.ai