Akuo

株式会社AKUODIGITAL (AKUODIGITAL Inc., akuo.co.jp) is a Tokyo-headquartered IT services company specializing in the digitization and automation of documents. Its registered business lines are information processing services, application/service/content provision, and packaged software. The company was established on 9 June 2017 as STIICA株式会社 and renamed AKUODIGITAL in August 2019. It has capital of 75 million yen, a December fiscal year end, and is registered under Japanese corporate number (6)0104-01-132063.

The product portfolio spans B2B and B2C offerings. Papers GO AI is an AI-OCR service that reads and structures non-standard documents such as invoices, business forms and handwritten paperwork, with automatic field extraction and classification that works without prior configuration. MINGO is a document platform that converts unstructured data such as paper documents and PDFs into searchable data, supporting semantic and natural-language search; the company states it is preparing for launch in Japan. Kanda Suite is an AI-OCR SaaS for enterprise digitization, including handwritten text recognition. A family of "stii" timestamp products covers intellectual property timestamping for R&D and design data, Electronic Book Preservation Act (電子帳簿保存法) compliant storage and attribute management, a batch timestamp verification tool, and an email-based timestamp issuance service aimed at individuals and firms for which conventional timestamp deployment is costly. Sticky-QR (スティーカミQR) is a consumer service for embedding photos, video, audio or text into blank QR code stickers.

The company holds a Privacy Mark certification (registration no. 17003934(02), obtained October 2020) and several Japanese patents, including no. 6462138 (2018), no. 6522183 for Sticky-QR (2019) and no. 7228735 for stii timestamp (2023).

Founding story

The company was incorporated on 9 June 2017 under the name STIICA株式会社 and began offering the STIICA service and STIICA PLUS the same year. CEO Kim Yong-seop previously founded group company AKUODIGITAL Corp. in Korea in January 2014 and served as its CTO, after roles as an application manager at LINE Corporation from February 2008 and as a senior engineer at Naver Corporation from October 2006.

Business model

AKUODIGITAL sells subscription and service-based IT products: AI-OCR SaaS and document platforms for corporate customers, timestamp issuance and management services for compliance and intellectual property use cases, and consumer products such as QR-code content services. Distribution includes direct sales (sales@akuo.co.jp) and channel arrangements, with a stii partner program launched in July 2024 and a contracted-vendor (特約店) agreement with the Japan Patent Attorneys Cooperative offering discounts to member patent attorneys and their clients.

Revenue comes from sales of B2B SaaS and service subscriptions (AI-OCR, document platform, timestamp issuance, management and verification tools) and consumer products, with discounted pricing offered through channel agreements such as the Japan Patent Attorneys Cooperative arrangement.

Traction

Documented traction includes the June 2021 release of Kanda Suite, formal release of the stii timestamp service in July 2023 and successive product additions through 2025, a Privacy Mark certification, three granted Japanese patents, an AI-OCR alliance with AOS Data, a contracted-vendor agreement with the Japan Patent Attorneys Cooperative in May 2025, media coverage in Nikkei and KJCBiz in May 2025, and the commercial launch of Papers GO AI in May 2026.

Latest developments

Papers GO AI went on sale on 6 May 2026 and was featured on the AI comparison media O!Product on 8 May 2026. Earlier, in May 2025 the company announced a contracted-vendor agreement with the Japan Patent Attorneys Cooperative and media coverage in Nikkei and KJCBiz, and in February 2025 it released the stii timestamp intellectual property manager. MINGO is in preparation for launch in Japan.