Oishii Launches Open Innovation Center in Tokyo to Advance Vertical Farming
Opening ceremony of the Open Innovation Center. | Oishii
Oishii opened its Open Innovation Center in Hamura, Tokyo, on Aug. 5, 2026, establishing a new research hub focused on the central challenges shaping vertical farming. The work will span scalable farming systems, productivity, sustainability, flavor, quality, and cultivation technologies for new varieties of fruits and vegetables.
The opening follows the first close of Oishii’s $150 million Series C in May 2026 and puts another piece of the company’s planned expansion across the U.S. and Japan into operation. The announcement identified the Open Innovation Center as a hub for growing Oishii’s R&D capabilities, alongside continued investment in robotics, farm infrastructure, and production across both markets.
Oishii chose Japan for the Open Innovation Center because of the country’s expertise in agriculture and manufacturing, two fields that underpin many of vertical farming’s technical demands. The facility gives Oishii and its partners a shared environment to connect expertise across disciplines and apply it to vertical farming research.
That potential drew support from leaders across Japan’s government and industry at the Open Innovation Center’s opening ceremony. “By combining Japan’s exceptional crop varieties with the advanced technologies cultivated through its manufacturing sector, including robotics, and further enhancing them with emerging technologies such as AI, we can create unique value for the world,” said Norikazu Suzuki, Japan’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
The outside of Oishii’s new Open Innovation Center. | Oishii
Some of the collaboration is already taking shape. NTT, an Oishii investor and strategic partner, is working with the company on optical approaches to pest and disease control and exploring voltage-controlled refrigeration to extend strawberry freshness and quality. NTT is also exploring where its broader capabilities could be applied within the Open Innovation Center’s research program.
“Building Oishii over the last 10 years has given us a much clearer understanding of where some of the hardest questions in indoor agriculture lie,” said Hiroki Koga, co-founder and CEO of Oishii. “The Open Innovation Center gives us a place to bring that experience together with people who have spent their careers approaching these questions from very different fields. There is still a lot we want to learn, and that exchange can push our work in directions we may not reach on our own.”