HEROZ is a Tokyo-listed Japanese AI company whose core technology came out of championship shogi engines. Its main commercial product today is HEROZ ASK, a corporate generative AI platform that puts Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT behind one governed company entry point.
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HEROZ is not a consumer AI tool you sign up for. It is a listed Japanese AI company, and the entry that brought you here describes the company rather than a single product. Understanding that distinction is the first useful thing to know about it: the site has no registration form, no free tier, and no product dashboard — its top-level navigation runs to services, company information, news, investor relations, recruitment and contact.
The company describes its own core technology as machine learning methods, deep learning included, accumulated through the development of shogi AI and now applied to problems across many industries rather than to board games alone. On its English pages the company gives that core technology a name — HEROZ Kishin — and traces it to AI development for Japanese chess, chess, backgammon and go. That origin is not marketing colour. The company's engineers built engines that beat professional players at a game whose branching factor dwarfs chess, and the machine learning practice developed in that pursuit became the asset it now sells to banks, construction firms and manufacturers.
ITmedia reported that the Tokyo Stock Exchange approved the listing on 15 March 2018, with trading beginning on 20 April 2018 under securities code 4382, and that the company was founded in 2009. Being publicly listed changes what can be known about it: unlike most entries in an AI tool directory, its revenue, margins and strategy are disclosed on a legal schedule rather than asserted in marketing copy.
For a reader who actually wants to use something, the practical answer is HEROZ ASK — the company's corporate generative AI platform, and the subject of most of the product detail below.
One correction worth noting: the address recorded in many directories, heroz.jp, redirects to a different domain, heroz.co.jp. Only the latter carries content, and everything here was verified against it.
Who it is not for: individuals looking for a personal AI assistant to sign up for; teams needing an English-first product with English-first support; and buyers who require self-service procurement without a sales conversation.
There is no publicly documented open API or developer programme for the enterprise platform, and no self-service trial link on the corporate site. Integration is described at the level of connected business systems rather than as a developer surface. (To be verified)
Pricing behaves differently here than for most entries in an AI directory, because two very different things are being sold.
For the packaged platform, HEROZ ASK advertises pricing from 900 yen per month built around a shared allowance for a department rather than per-seat billing, on the argument that per-ID licences waste budget on employees who never log in. That is an unusually specific and unusually low published entry point for Japanese enterprise software, and it is the product's clearest commercial differentiator. One caveat belongs with it: the company's claim to be among the lowest-priced in its category carries a footnote attributing it to the company's own survey conducted in November 2024 — a vendor self-assessment rather than independent benchmarking.
For bespoke industrial AI work, no pricing is published at all, which is standard for project-based enterprise AI delivery.
The company's financial disclosures give an unusually concrete picture of how this converts into revenue. For the fiscal year ended April 2026 the group reported consolidated revenue of 6.424 billion yen, up 8.3% year on year, with operating profit of 523 million yen, up 70.7%. EBITDA came to 1.025 billion yen, up 29.2%. Management disclosed that HEROZ ASK grew 27.8% quarter on quarter in the fourth quarter and passed 200 million yen in annual recurring revenue by the end of April.
Read carefully, those numbers say something useful to a prospective buyer: the flagship platform is growing quickly but is still a small fraction of a group whose revenue comes substantially from elsewhere. That is neither good nor bad on its own, but it is the kind of context a private vendor would never disclose.
Not directly. HEROZ is a company, and its corporate site has no registration or login for individuals. The product a business would actually adopt is HEROZ ASK, which has its own site and a consultation-based sales process rather than self-service signup.
A corporate generative AI platform. It provides staff with a governed interface to leading commercial models, connects to internal company data for search and summarisation, and bundles the security, slide generation and system integration features that corporate deployments require.
Its product materials state support for the latest models from Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. It is a platform layer over third-party models rather than a proprietary foundation model, and the model line-up in any given tenancy is worth confirming directly.
Published pricing for the platform starts at 900 yen per month, structured as an allowance shared across a department rather than charged per user. Bespoke industrial AI projects are priced individually and no figures are published. The company's claim to be among the cheapest in its class comes from its own survey rather than independent comparison.
It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and for the fiscal year ended April 2026 it reported group revenue of 6.424 billion yen with operating profit of 523 million yen, both up year on year. Listing means these figures are audited and disclosed on a schedule, which is a materially stronger basis for judgement than most AI vendors offer.
The company's machine learning practice was developed building engines for shogi and other brain games, culminating in an AI that beat an active professional player. The engines themselves are not the product; the accumulated method and the engineering team are what the company applies to industrial problems.
The corporate site has an English section, but it covers company and investor information rather than product documentation. Treat the platform as a Japanese-market product and confirm any English support requirement explicitly before committing.
Very little is publicly available. The main Japanese B2B review platform lists a high satisfaction score based on one review, which is not a usable sample. No substantial independent user feedback or technology press evaluation of the platform exists, so buyers should rely on their own pilot rather than on published sentiment.
Yes. The shogi app recognised by the Japan Shogi Association remains a live consumer product, as does the board game co-developed with The Pokémon Company. These are the company's historical foundation and a continuing part of its brand, though the enterprise business is where its strategy now concentrates.
Three things the website cannot answer: the contractual terms covering data retention and how the underlying model providers handle your content; which models are actually available in your tenancy and what happens on deprecation; and whether the product line is one of the two strategic axes the company has said it will prioritise. All three are procurement questions, and all three matter more than any feature list.
Verified against the company's public pages and its FY2026 results briefing in August 2026. Figures for a listed company change on a disclosure schedule; check the latest filings before relying on any number here.
