Japan
530 companies assessed. 106 of them, 20.0%, sit in the two least protected bands, against 53.3% across all 10,525 companies assessed.
Japan's biggest companies split into two very different stories right now. Rail operators, megabanks, top universities, and old insurance and manufacturing names are barely touched, they have physical networks, land, licenses, or research reputations that AI tools simply can't replicate, so their pressure scores sit near zero. But anywhere a business sells a service that can be automated, undercut, or matched by a cheaper digital competitor, things are moving fast. Ad agencies are watching platforms like Google and Meta automate the buying work they used to bill for. Retailers and portals that depend on being the default place to search are getting squeezed by AI search and bigger rivals. Crypto, gig work, and mobile gaming show the most extreme cases, some companies here have already been absorbed or shut down entirely. The one thing deciding survival is whether a company controls something scarce, land, licenses, trust, or a physical network, versus something that can be copied by software. Companies with scarce physical or institutional assets are holding steady even with zero AI strategy. Companies whose whole value was being a convenient middleman, a subscription tutor, or a familiar brand name are the ones losing ground, and the losses are already showing up in revenue, not just projections.
Every company in Japan is listed in the A to Z index and in its sector league.
- Which Japanese companies are most at risk from AI?
- Companies whose value was being a convenient middleman or a subscription service, like Benesse in tutoring and Treasure Data in customer data, are seeing the clearest pressure. Ad agency Hakuhodo DY and CDP maker Treasure Data both face automated tools taking over work they used to charge for.
- Is Nissan going to survive?
- Nissan is under real pressure, with its US market share dropping from about 9% to about 6% over a decade as BYD, Geely, Hyundai, and Kia sell cheaper, faster EVs. It's mid-overhaul with no clear technology edge yet.
- What happened to Askul after the ransomware attack?
- Askul's sales dropped roughly 95% after an October 2025 ransomware attack froze ordering and shipping for weeks. Amazon Business Japan and Kaunet from Kokuyo picked up the stranded business customers during the outage.
- Why is Shiseido losing ground to L'Oreal?
- L'Oreal is growing faster overall, and Shiseido's own Drunk Elephant brand fell 65% year over year, which forced the company into job cuts and pulling back in the Americas.
- Are Japanese banks safe in the AI era?
- Megabanks like Sumitomo Mitsui show low pressure and strong positions because deposit and lending relationships are sticky. Japan Post Bank is a different story, its deposit base is shrinking as it loses ground to rate-competitive megabanks.
- What is happening to Japan's ad agencies with AI?
- Hakuhodo DY's revenue fell 9.7% year over year as automated platform tools like Google Buyer Direct take over media-buying work agencies used to bill for. Its subsidiary Opt was fully absorbed after a buyout.
- Hakuhodo DY's revenue keeps declining year over year
- Sakura Internet's legacy hosting revenue keeps falling while GPU cloud grows
- Treasure Data losing named enterprise contracts to Salesforce Data Cloud