Rakuten

Rakuten was founded in 1997. It owns the largest online trading platform in Japan, Rakuten Ichiba.

History

2021: Investing in Quantum Computer Developer QuEra Computing

In the middle of November, 2021 the developer quantum kompyuteraQuEra attracted with Computing $17 million from Rakuten, the Californian fund with the Russian roots Day One Ventures and Frontiers Capital. Business angels Sergey Belousov and Paul Maritz also took part in the investment round. More details here.

2020: In the top 50 largest Internet sites in the world

The largest Internet sites in the world for November 2020

2019: Plans to train 17,000 programming staff

In mid-March 2019, billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Rakuten, said he was going to force 17 thousand employees of the company to study programming.

Mikitani, considered a pioneer in the development of Japan's Internet economy, sees this step as a necessary stage of competition with technology giants such as Amazon. Although the World Economic Forum predicts that more than half of the world's workers will need training by 2022, few people follow the example of companies such as Nokia, which plans to familiarize all employees with machine training.

Hiroshi Mikitani intends to force 17 thousand employees to learn programming in order to better compete with Amazon

Since 2018, Rakuten has made programming the main part of the training for graduates: 260 people who are not engineers are already undergoing a six-month training course, including the initial level of Java and basic skills in building a network architecture. Another 400 new employees who get a job in April 2019 will undergo three-month training to submit their projects to the court of colleagues. The company has not yet talked about plans for widespread programming training, but perhaps this is what is happening.

The minimum set of digital skills already goes beyond the ability to work with Microsoft Office, and includes working with collaboration applications, customer relationship databases, and social media etiquette. In the coming years, the average employee may also need to know the basics of data science and understand various aspects of artificial intelligence. Mikitani believes that this is a necessary step, and his initiative to teach English to employees by 2009 shows that this is possible.^[1]

2016

As of 2016, the company had more than 13 thousand employees. According to Forbes magazine, Rakuten is among the top ten most innovative companies in the world. Since 2005, it has been actively expanding abroad, buying up IT companies. Viber was purchased by her in order to compete in the local market with the Line Corporation service.

Rakuten founder and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani is a Japanese billionaire whose fortune is estimated at $6.1 billion. Rakuten's revenue in 2016 amounted to just over $7 billion.

In November 2016, the company became a sponsor of the Spanish football club Barcelona, as a result of which Viber was recently appointed the club's official messenger.

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