Knowledge Work, a Tokyo company that builds AI agents for sales teams, has raised ¥4.8bn (about $30.6m) in debt financing, including credit lines, as the second and final close of its Series C round. The company announced the financing on 23 October 2026.
The lenders are Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, MUFG Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, Shoko Chukin Bank, Shizuoka Bank and Bank of Fukuoka, according to the company's release. It did not say how the total splits between term loans and credit lines.
Together with a first close of ¥3.5bn (about $22.3m) in new equity, the Series C comes to ¥8.3bn (about $52.9m). Knowledge Work did not disclose a valuation.
What Knowledge Work does
Knowledge Work says it has changed its business model from selling software as a service to being what it calls an AI company. Its products are meant to raise the productivity of corporate sales teams by handing parts of their work to AI agents.
It sells three product lines. A consulting series helps customers build and run AI agents designed around their own sales processes. A product series supplies ready-made agents for standard sales tasks. A third line, which the company describes as an operating system for sales AI agents, is the base it uses to make those agents more accurate.
The company said its customers are mainly large enterprises, including NTT Docomo Business, Mizuho Bank and Nissin Foods, and that some deployments run to thousands of users. Mizuho Bank is therefore both a customer and one of the lenders in this round.
Startup news site Sogyo Techo, which reported the financing, described the problem the company targets as sales know-how that stays with individual staff: successful methods are hard to share across a team and can be lost when people move on or leave.
What the money is for
Knowledge Work said it will put the funds into strategic investments and keep strengthening how it builds and operates sales AI agents for its clients. It did not give a breakdown of planned spending, hiring targets or revenue figures.
The company was incorporated in March 2020 and began operating in April that year. Koji Asano, a founder, is its chief executive. It is based in the Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower in Minato, Tokyo.
The funding so far
The equity half of the Series C was announced on 4 August 2026, according to Sogyo Techo. The October release did not name the investors in that close.
Before that, Knowledge Work raised a ¥4.5bn Series B in November 2023 from World Innovation Lab (WiL) and Globis Capital Partners, The Bridge reported at the time. The Bridge said that round took the company's total funding to ¥6.12bn, and noted two Series A closes announced in April and June 2022, without giving their size.
In its latest release, Knowledge Work put its cumulative equity funding at ¥9.74bn (about $62m) and its cumulative debt funding, including credit lines, at ¥6.49bn (about $41.3m). Taken together that is about ¥16.2bn, or roughly $103m. The figures do not line up exactly: subtracting the ¥3.5bn Series C equity from the company's cumulative total leaves ¥6.24bn, about ¥120m more than the ¥6.12bn total The Bridge reported after the Series B. The sources do not explain the difference.
Dollar figures in this article are converted at about ¥157 to the dollar.
Company website: knowledgework.com