NYK Invests in Ghelia to Develop AI Services for Shipping
Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) and GHELIA INC. (Ghelia) have entered into a business and capital alliance agreement that comes with an investment by NYK in Ghelia. The two companies will collaborate on R&D for autonomous ships, avoidance navigation, etc., as well as promote DX by introducing Ghelia’s AI technologies to business processes in various NYK divisions.
The shipping industry has recently seen a number of requests involving the development and design of digital engineering and digital twins, the establishment of fully autonomous ship systems, and technological innovation such as next-generation energy for decarbonization. The same can be said for ensuring safety throughout the process of vessel operation.
Under these circumstances, the NYK Group has been strengthening its initiatives in the technological field related to next-generation ships. At the same time, Ghelia has been developing a wider and deeper range of technologies — such as AI in edge terminals, deep reinforcement learning, image data processing, and natural language processing — and crafting them into products and services. In fact, since its foundation, Ghelia has been leading the expansion of social implementation of AI by providing a wider range of AI solutions to customers in various industries, thus allowing customers to improve profitability and work efficiency.
In this era of open collaboration in technology development, the two companies have entered into a business and capital alliance agreement to build a strategic partnership. Specifically, NYK and Ghelia will work to realize AI technologies at NYK. In the future, both companies will try to create and utilize advanced, practical AI services, aiming at leading the global shipping industry and contributing to further expansion of the industry.
"We are convinced that this capital and business alliance with Ghelia, which has been providing AI solutions to a wide variety of customers through the company’s strength in AI development and deep reinforcement learning, will hugely contribute to further technological development in the shipping industry and the promotion of business DX through the utilization of AI," said Hideki Suzuki, executive officer of NYK. "In the future, we expect to not only practically utilize AI technologies in NYK but also work on creating new value by providing AI services that lead the shipping industry."
