Interview
How NeuralX is Building the Future of AI with Artificial Life Simulation

The aquaculture industry faces a persistent challenge: how to monitor fish health, optimize feeding, and accurately estimate inventory in underwater environments where visibility is limited and conditions constantly change. For farmers, uncertainty about fish size and biomass leads to missed revenue opportunities. Inefficient feeding wastes costs. Late disease detection can result in catastrophic losses.
Unlike terrestrial agriculture where drones and sensors can monitor crops, underwater environments remain largely opaque to technology. Traditional monitoring methods rely on human observation and guesswork—an approach that doesn't scale.
Enter NeuralX, a Japanese startup tackling these challenges through artificial life simulation. By creating detailed 3D simulations of fish behavior, the company generates high-quality data that has been nearly impossible to collect in real underwater environments.
"We deliberately chose aquaculture precisely because it is difficult," says Nakada, CEO and founder of NeuralX. "If you start in an easy domain, you are quickly outcompeted by large incumbents."

For Nakada, whose background is in neuroscience, the path began with a fundamental question: if we can understand how neurons create intelligence in the human brain, could we recreate that intelligence artificially? This led him to establish NeuralX—"Neural" reflecting his foundation in brain science, and "X" representing unlimited possibilities.
Based in Tsukuba, Japan, with operations in California, NeuralX is developing artificial life simulation technology that generates massive 3D behavioral datasets.

NeuralX's competitive advantage lies in addressing a fundamental challenge: the next generation of AI requires massive datasets with three-dimensional annotations, which are prohibitively expensive to collect manually.
Using computer graphics technologies, NeuralX creates fully simulated 3D environments that generate unlimited labeled data without human intervention. Because the data is simulated, the company knows the exact internal states—stress levels, hunger, physical condition—of each animal, creating training datasets impossible to obtain in the real world.

NeuralX's journey wasn't always focused on aquaculture. The company initially developed products for fitness and apparel markets—but they didn't sell.
"Technical superiority does not guarantee market success," Nakada reflects. "In fitness and apparel, success depends more on branding and influencers—areas that were not our strengths."
The company made a decisive pivot, preserving its core research expertise while moving toward markets where deep technical capabilities would create decisive competitive advantages. This shaped NeuralX's current philosophy: target the most challenging markets first.

Today, NeuralX provides AI solutions through a SaaS model, delivering ROI through feeding cost optimization, inventory management, disease detection, and growth forecasting.
"Inventory management is a universal pain point," Nakada notes. "If farmers could accurately understand fish size and biomass, they could sell 100% of their stock efficiently."
NeuralX has achieved paid proof-of-concept projects—a major milestone. One notable collaboration is with Blue Ocean Mariculture in Hawaii. "We started with an unpaid POC and have now transitioned to a paid contract," says Nakada. "Hawaii offers a beautiful ocean environment for demonstration, and it's one of the limited areas in the United States where open-ocean aquaculture is permitted."
"The project has moved from unpaid demonstration to paid implementation, and we're now entering a phase of scaling up," Nakada explains.

With headquarters in Tsukuba and a business base in California, the company strategically chose Japan for its research strength. "Japan—particularly areas like Tsukuba—has a strong culture of deep research and precision," explains Nakada. "For deep tech, Japan is an excellent development base."
NeuralX has participated in JETRO-supported initiatives for overseas expansion. NeuralX joined the J-StarX Europe Long-term course, and "exhibition opportunities such as VivaTech were extremely valuable," Nakada notes. "Longer programs—around one month—were especially impactful. Trust cannot be built in just a few days."
Following its next funding round, NeuralX plans aggressive European expansion, targeting France, Norway, Denmark, Spain, and Italy—major aquaculture markets where the technology can deliver immediate impact.

While aquaculture represents the near-term application, Nakada's vision extends much further—to agriculture, livestock, and eventually human applications in healthcare, security, and retail.
"Our goal is to become the foundational engine for next-generation AI by providing large-scale, high-quality 3D behavioral datasets through artificial life simulation," Nakada declares.
The same core technology analyzing fish behavior can be reconfigured for chickens, pigs, and eventually humans. Each new application builds on the same simulation infrastructure, creating powerful economies of scale.
"We're looking for engineers excited to work on our unique artificial life engine," says Nakada. "We welcome investors and partners who share our vision."
It's an ambitious journey—from neuroscience research to building the data infrastructure that could power the next generation of 3D AI. By starting with the hardest market first, NeuralX is proving that sometimes the most difficult path leads to the most defensible position.