One of Seven Companies Chosen from Applicants Across 22 Countries to Bring Physical AI Position Sensing to Tokyo’s Green Transformation Initiative
BELMONT, Calif. and TOKYO, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ZaiNar, the foundation layer for Physical AI, today announced the opening of its Tokyo office and its selection by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) as one of seven companies for the GX-Related Foreign Company Market Entry Support Program. ZaiNar was chosen from applicants across 22 countries following expert review, making it one of the most competitive public innovation programs in the Asia-Pacific region. The Tokyo office will serve as ZaiNar’s APAC hub for smart city and green transformation deployments.
“Tokyo is exactly the kind of city for which we designed ZaiNar’s Physical AI capabilities,” said Daniel Jacker, CEO and Co-Founder of ZaiNar. “The density that breaks GPS is the same density that makes real-time positioning matter most. We’re not bringing a pilot program to Tokyo – we’re bringing a deployed platform that already operates commercially on multiple continents, and we’re building the team here to expand it across the region. Being selected by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government alongside companies from around the globe validates both the technology and the opportunity.”
Tokyo’s Importance as a Proving Ground for Physical AI 5G Sensing
Tokyo presents one of the world’s most consequential opportunities for Physical AI – and one of the hardest problems for conventional positioning technology.
The city’s massive number of tightly-packed, high-rise buildings creates deep signal shadows that defeat GPS across large swaths of the metropolitan area. At the same time, Tokyo also has one of the most-dense 5G cellular network deployments of anywhere on the planet, making it the perfect location for leveraging 5G signals for location.
This combination of urban and 5G density matters from an emissions perspective because Tokyo’s street grid carries some of the highest traffic volumes on earth, and vehicle emissions remain a leading contributor to urban greenhouse gas output.
Real-time awareness of where vehicles, industrial equipment, and logistics assets actually are represents an incredibly valuable and impactful dataset. Information about traffic flow, volume and idling vehicles – not approximated by satellite, but precisely located within centimeters – is the missing layer that separates today’s traffic management systems from the kind of intelligent coordination that can meaningfully reduce emissions.
ZaiNar’s platform solves this with already-present 5G networks – activating, and acting as, a “nervous system” for the city. By achieving sub-nanosecond time synchronization across existing wireless infrastructure, ZaiNar derives positioning accurate to less than 10 centimeters – continuously, 100 to 500 times per second, across a range of 1.5 kilometers – with no new hardware, no cameras, no satellites, and no software required on any located device.
The system operates entirely on the network side, which means it works in the urban canyons and underground environments where GPS cannot reach. In Tokyo, this translates directly: buses, delivery vehicles, heavy machinery, and autonomous systems can all be located in real time, giving traffic operators and Physical AI systems the continuous spatial data they need to make decisions that reduce congestion, cut idle time, and lower emissions.
Tokyo’s GX Program
The TMG’s GX Foreign Company Market Entry Support Program is designed to accelerate Tokyo’s green transformation by attracting foreign companies with advanced capabilities in energy, decarbonization, and smart city technology.
Selected companies receive a substantial, structured support package that includes multi-year grant funding for operating expenses. ZaiNar’s Tokyo office will focus on smart city applications in construction, logistics, and urban traffic management – sectors the TMG has identified as priorities for emissions reduction and operational modernization.
Commercial Momentum
ZaiNar is deployed and operating commercially today – in healthcare facilities, on construction sites, and across industrial operations on multiple continents. The company has filed more than 100 patents, with over 95 issued, and has secured more than $500 million in contracts and memoranda of understanding. The Tokyo office represents ZaiNar’s first dedicated presence in the Asia-Pacific market, with plans to expand personnel and partnerships in the region over the course of 2026.
About ZaiNar
ZaiNar is the foundation layer for Physical AI. The company’s patented technology achieves sub-nanosecond time synchronization and distribution across wireless networks, transforming existing 5G and WiFi infrastructure into a comprehensive spatial sensing system. ZaiNar delivers continuous spatial awareness so that connected systems know their location, understand surrounding assets, and share that context with AI that coordinates the physical world. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Belmont, CA, the company has had more than $100 million in investment, is backed by tier-1 investors including Steve Jurvetson (board member; also serves on the board of SpaceX), Jerry Yang (co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.), and Andreas Weigend (ZaiNar advisor and former Chief Scientist at Amazon), and is valued at more than $1 billion. For more information, visit zainartech.com.
SOURCE ZaiNar, Inc
