株式会社BONX

株式会社BONX (BONX Inc.) is a Tokyo-based hardware-and-software company that develops group voice communication technology combining proprietary hearable devices with smartphone applications and a cloud service. The consumer-facing BONX line serves sports and everyday lifestyle use, while BONX WORK is the business offering: a field communication platform providing group talk, text chat, recording and transcription for teams. Hardware products listed by the company include BONX BOOST, BONX GRIP and BONX mini; earlier devices were ear-hook units with built-in speaker and microphone, IPX5 water resistance, and voice activity detection allowing hands-free conversation.

The system routes calls over VoIP using mobile data or Wi-Fi rather than radio, so participants can talk simultaneously regardless of distance; early product specifications cited up to 10 simultaneous participants, and the 2018 business product supported groups of up to 30. The company positions its offering around "deskless workers" — an estimated 40 million people in Japan working in construction and civil engineering, medical and nursing care, retail and distribution, lodging and food service — who it describes as still relying on transceivers, mobile phones and shouting. Later additions include BONX Anywhere, which allows BONX WORK to run in private cloud or on-premises network environments, industry-specific service integrations, and an analytics dashboard that visualizes who is speaking and how communication differs across sites.

Beyond voice calling, the company has pursued "voice DX," separating voice packets by speaker and classifying them by ID so per-speaker text can be generated for tasks such as spoken work reports. A system co-developed with Ricoh was deployed at the Matsuya Ginza department store, letting tailors register men's suit measurements into a CRM by speaking them aloud during customer consultations.

Founding story

Founder Takahiro Miyasaka, a snowboarder and entrepreneur with no prior background as an engineer, designer or hardware developer, conceived the product in the snow mountains of Nagano out of a wish for a tool that would let him talk with friends while snowboarding. He established the company in November 2014 and assembled a team of hardware and software engineers, developing the first product over roughly a year as a then-rare Japanese hardware startup.

Business model

BONX develops and sells wearable/hearable devices and mobile applications, and also undertakes contract development of BONX-related services. On the business side it supplies BONX WORK as a subscription (monthly/annual) platform for corporate customers with deskless workforces, sold together with its own hearable hardware and with rental packages of smartphones, SIM devices and peripherals arranged with partner companies, forming an integrated hardware-plus-software field communication offering.

Consumer hardware sales through its own online store, Amazon and rental services such as Rentio, plus retail distribution; for business customers, SaaS subscription fees for BONX WORK alongside device sales and rental packages.

Traction

The 2015 GREEN FUNDING campaign gathered more than 25 million yen from 1,344 backers, described as the highest amount for an IoT device in Japan at the time. Following the 2016 launch and 2017 full retail rollout, adoption spread from snow sports to cycling and airsoft, and business deployments grew after the 2018 launch of BONX for BUSINESS, with named users including ANA's A380 cabin crew, hospitals, retailers and the Matsuya Ginza department store. Recent site announcements cite deployments at Shimizu Corporation's Yokohama branch and at the Asahi Home geriatric health services facility. A recruiting profile listed 18 employees, capital of 100 million yen and an average employee age of 32.

Latest developments

In May 2023 the company closed a Series E round led by NTT Sonority with participation from Lotte Ventures Japan, appointing Daniel Sullivan as CTO and Shunsuke Aihara as an outside director, and outlining product priorities in BONX Anywhere, industry-specific integrations and analytics. Company announcements dated 2026 cover a BONX WORK case study at the Asahi Home geriatric care facility, a video case study at Shimizu Corporation's Yokohama branch, and free provision of BONX WORK to support recovery efforts after the 2026 Kumamoto earthquake.