Rakuten Founder Mikitani Bets on AI to Drive Profit Growth

Rakuten Group has grown from a Japanese e-commerce company into a conglomerate spanning finance, travel and mobile communications. Founder and Chief Executive Hiroshi Mikitani has long treated organizational reform as central to that expansion. Rakuten announced its “Englishnization” initiative in 2010 and made English its official internal language in 2012, widening its access to international engineering and management talent as it pursued global growth and technology-led businesses.

Mikitani said in a recent interview that artificial intelligence would become a core engine for improving Rakuten’s profitability, with the group targeting a 20% increase in operational efficiency through AI applications. He also cited the company’s English-language policy as a successful recruiting tool and highlighted Rakuten Mobile’s cloud-native architecture. The telecom unit began commercial service in 2020, providing a technology base that Rakuten says can accelerate automation and AI deployment.