
Established 77 years ago, Mitsui & Co stays vibrant by building businesses and ecosystems with new technologies like generative AI and confidential computing.
Digital transformation takes many forms at the Tokyo-based conglomerate with 16 divisions. In one case, it's an autonomous trucking service, in another it's a geospatial analysis platform. Mitsui even collaborates with a partner at the leading edge of quantum computing.
One new subsidiary, Xeureka, aims to accelerate R&D in healthcare, where it can take more than a billion dollars spent over a decade to bring to market a new drug.
We create businesses using new digital technology like AI and confidential computing, said Katsuya Ito, a project manager in Mitsui's digital transformation group. Most of our work is done in collaboration with tech companies - in this case NVIDIA and Fortanix, a San Francisco based security software company.
In Pursuit of Big Data Though only three years old, Xeureka already completed a proof of concept addressing one of drug discovery's biggest problems - getting enough data.
Speeding drug discovery requires powerful AI models built with datasets larger than most pharmaceutical companies have on hand. Until recently, sharing across companies has been unthinkable because data often contains private patient information as well as chemical formulas proprietary to the drug company.
Enter confidential computing, a way of processing data in a protected part of a GPU or CPU that acts like a black box for an organization's most important secrets.
To ensure their data is kept confidential at all times, banks, government agencies and even advertisers are using the technology that's backed by a consortium of some of the world's largest companies.
A Proof of Concept for Privacy To validate that confidential computing would allow its customers to safely share data, Xeureka created two imaginary companies, each with a thousand drug candidates. Each company's dataset was used separately to train an AI model to predict the chemicals' toxicity levels. Then the data was combined to train a similar, but larger AI model.
Xeureka ran its test on NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs using security management software from Fortanix, one of the first startups to support confidential computing.
The H100 GPUs support a trusted execution environment with hardware-based engines that ensure and validate confidential workloads are protected while in use on the GPU, without compromising performance. The Fortanix software manages data sharing, encryption keys and the overall workflow.
Up to 74% Higher Accuracy The results were impressive. The larger model's predictions were 65-74% more accurate, thanks to use of the combined datasets.
The models created by a single company's data showed instability and bias issues that were not present with the larger model, Ito said.
Confidential computing from NVIDIA and Fortanix essentially alleviates the privacy and security concerns while also improving model accuracy, which will prove to be a win-win situation for the entire industry, said Xeureka's CTO, Hiroki Makiguchi, in a Fortanix press release.
An AI Supercomputing Ecosystem Now, Xeureka is exploring broad applications of this technology in drug discovery research, in collaboration with the community behind Tokyo-1, its GPU-accelerated AI supercomputer. Announced in February, Tokyo-1 aims to enhance the efficiency of pharmaceutical companies in Japan and beyond.
Initial projects may include collaborations to predict protein structures, screen ligand-base pairs and accelerate molecular dynamics simulations with trusted services. Tokyo-1 users can harness large language models for chemistry, protein, DNA and RNA data formats through the NVIDIA BioNeMo drug discovery microservices and framework.
It's part of Mitsui's broader strategic growth plan to develop software and services for healthcare, such as powering Japan's $100 billion pharma industry, the world's third largest following the U.S. and China.
Xeueka's services will include using AI to quickly screen billions of drug candidates, to predict how useful molecules will bind with proteins and to simulate detailed chemical behaviors.
To learn more, read about NVIDIA Confidential Computing and NVIDIA BioNeMo, an AI platform for drug discovery.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
06/04/2026
Michigan legends bring a new voice to the broadcast as TNT Sports and CBS Sports...
06/04/2026
From high school sports all the way up to the major leagues, building high-quali...
06/04/2026
Quickplay, an AI company for the media and entertainment industry, has been accepted into the Advanced tier of the TwelveLabs Ecosystem Partner Program. Quickpl...
06/04/2026
Grass Valley has announced the Future Playmakers Program, a global initiative to...
06/04/2026
El l der de operaciones impulsa la producci n en estudio mientras encuentra insp...
06/04/2026
The ops leader helps lead the charge in studio for the Spanish-language broadcas...
06/04/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
06/04/2026
The National Hockey League (NHL), in partnership with Verizon and the New Jersey Devils, today announced the opening of the NHL Innovation Lab powered by Verizo...
06/04/2026
Rock League, a new professional curling league, has announced that ESPN+ will stream its inaugural 2026 season for fans in the United States. The first Rock Lea...
06/04/2026
Advanced Systems Group has announced the appointment of Andrea (Andy) Cummis as Vice President of Systems Design and Engineering. In this role, she will lead de...
06/04/2026
Backed by Bolt Ventures, the venture brings Bryson DeChambeau, Grant Horvat, and...
06/04/2026
With this environment we can start that collaboration even earlier because we ca...
06/04/2026
Like the immortal lives of vampires, some stories never really end. That's t...
06/04/2026
As podcasting continues to evolve, growth increasingly means building beyond aud...
06/04/2026
Multiband dynamics plug-in enhanced
California-based developer FSK Audio have released a significant update for their innovative multiband dynamics processo...
06/04/2026
Share official & user-created full-rig presets
IK Multimedia's latest TONEX update makes it possible for users of the popular amp and effects modelling ...
06/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/04/2026
Dalet Showcases Dalia Agentic AI and End-to-End Media Workflows at NAB Show 2026
Brie Clayton April 6, 2026
0 Comments
Dalet, a leading technology and...
06/04/2026
OpenDrives Shows Off Sports Expertise in Sports Business Hub located in NAB Show...
06/04/2026
Proton to Demonstrate 3D Application at NAB 2026
Brie Clayton April 6, 2026
0 Comments
Yet further creative potential unleashed through innovation in ...
06/04/2026
Autoscript Highlights Voice-Driven Prompting and PTZ Solutions at NAB 2026
Brie Clayton April 6, 2026
0 Comments
Experience Autoscript Voice, PTZ prom...
06/04/2026
Mediaproxy Highlights Significant Enhancements to its LogServer suite at NAB Sho...
06/04/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Expands Kids Entertainment Lineup With Playground App ...
05/04/2026
Tackles all reported bugs!
SoundBridge have just announced the launch of a new update that introduces a couple of minor changes to their remote collaboratio...
04/04/2026
The University of Arizona's Men's Basketball team has only loss twice th...
04/04/2026
1080p HDR arrives, a new generation of storytelling tools takes center stage, an...
04/04/2026
Michigan legends bring a new voice to the broadcast as TNT Sports and CBS Sports...
04/04/2026
Faster, cleaner and more intuitive than ever
The control software for Flock Audio's digitally controlled patchbay systems has just been treated to an up...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
DHD Introduces AI-Based Audio Noise Reduction to XD3 IP Core
Brie Clayton April 3, 2026
0 Comments
The accompanying image shows the rear panel of the ...
04/04/2026
Macnica Redefines ST 2110 Flexibility with Two Speeds on One Card
Brie Clayton April 3, 2026
0 Comments
New for NAB Show 2026, MEP100 SmartNIC now sup...
04/04/2026
Unified Media Workflows for Story-Centric Production
Brie Clayton April 3, 2026
0 Comments
Framelight X unifies field capture, editing and publishing ...
03/04/2026
Michigan's Fab Five will reunite for an alternate presentation of the Mich...
03/04/2026
Avid will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (April 18-22, Booth N2226, Las Vegas Convention Center), demonstrating its Content Core platform and new AI-driven workflow c...
03/04/2026
Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has announced the appointment of Nick Barthee as Chief Operating Officer.
The announcement follows MRMC's transition fro...
03/04/2026
Interra Systems has announced that Elite Media Technologies has selected its BATON file-based QC solution for media workflows. Elite Media Technologies speciali...
03/04/2026
Ateme has announced that Moldtelecom has deployed Ateme technologies across its streaming workflow, covering encoding, delivery, operations, and analytics.
Mol...
03/04/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate Framelight X, its content management platform, at NAB Show 2026. The platform connects capture, ingest, editing, and publishing in...
03/04/2026
Encompass Digital Media and Techex have announced a cloud-native Master Control ...
03/04/2026
Live Vertical Video automatically track the action on the court via AI technology and delivers a fully optimized, 9 16 live feed for viewers...
03/04/2026
As the Illini make their first trip to college basketball's biggest stage si...