DriveX raises about 150 million yen for AI production-planning software for manufacturers

DriveX raises about 150 million yen for AI production-planning software for manufacturers

2 October 2026 — DriveX, a software company based in Shibuya, Tokyo, said on 2 October 2026 that it has raised a total of about 150 million yen. The company announced the round in a release on PR TIMES, the Japanese press-release service.

Not yet independently verified. Rests on one source: the company's own PR TIMES release (Japanese). The stage is not stated and the investors are not named (described only as operating companies and individual investors). The amount is as stated by the company ("a total of 150 million yen"). No outlet confirmation was found. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The round

• Amount: a total of about 150 million yen, as stated by DriveX.
• Stage: not stated.
• Investors: the company says the money came from operating companies and individual investors; none is named, and no lead is given.
• Use of the money: to speed up development of its production-planning product, to strengthen the team that supports factory deployments, and to hire product and business staff.

What the company does

DriveX develops "Smart Production Planning" (スマート生産計画), an AI product for manufacturers that connects to core systems such as ERP and MES. Per the release, it reads order data arriving as Excel, CSV and PDF files, builds a plan within the limits of equipment, staff, working calendars and process flows, shows it on a Gantt chart for manual adjustment, and learns from recorded production results to update standard times and worker skills. The company says it was founded in 2022 and also provides AI transformation services to firms in manufacturing, distribution, apparel, healthcare and real estate.

The release frames the problem as plans that depend on one experienced person and a spreadsheet, which makes rush orders, delivery changes and equipment faults slow to handle.

Why it matters for buyers

Production scheduling is often done in spreadsheets, so this is a funded new entrant in a long-neglected area, with Japanese-market manufacturing as its focus. The round is small, so buyers should read it as support for development and deployment capacity, not as evidence of scale.

What to check

• Ask for reference customers in your sector and how long implementation took.
• Confirm which ERP and MES systems have working connectors, rather than planned ones.
• Ask what happens when the AI cannot satisfy every constraint: how conflicts are shown and who decides.
• Ask where data is hosted and whether production data is used to train models shared across customers.
• Check pricing, support language and onboarding capacity, since the release says deployment support is still being strengthened.

Sources

• DriveX via PR TIMES: DriveX raises about 150 million yen (Japanese release) — 2 October 2026