Z Venture Capital
LY Corporation's venture arm, backing AI, fintech, media, commerce and deep tech startups from seed to growth.
🇯🇵 Tokyo · Founded 2012
Seed to Growth·Leads or follows
Z Venture Capital (ZVC) is the corporate venture capital arm of LY Corporation, the company behind LINE and Yahoo Japan. It was established in 2012 as YJ Capital and merged with LINE Ventures in April 2021. LY Corporation owns 100% of it. ZVC has offices in Tokyo, Seoul and San Francisco and invests across Japan, Korea, the United States and Southeast Asia. It invests from seed through late-stage growth, with a strong emphasis on seed and early-stage rounds.
What they invest in
We invest in and support innovative startups driving transformative societal changes, leveraging proprietary resources, expertise, and assets from LY Corporation Group. We actively invest across Japan, Korea, the United States, and Southeast Asia.
- Stage
- Seed to Growth
- Role in a round
- Leads or follows
- Fund
- ZVC Fund II · ¥30B (launched January 2025)
- AI
- Fintech
- Media
- Commerce
- Deep tech
- Japan
- South Korea
- United States
- Southeast Asia
How to pitch
They read inbound pitches that match the criteria above.
Open to
- Pitches from founders
- Co-investment
- Co-marketing & events
ZVC takes funding and partnership inquiries through its contact form. It also runs ZVC Connect, an event where startups pitch LY Corporation for business partnerships, and co-hosts founder events in Tokyo.
Portfolio
ZVC and its predecessor funds have backed startups since 2012 across Japan, Korea, the US and Southeast Asia. In 2024 it made 54 investments totalling $34.5M, mostly at seed and early stage. Main sectors are AI, media, fintech, commerce and deep tech.
Some of the companies they have backed
The portfolio at a glance · 30 companies · 2017–2026 · 4 exits · led 2
Sectors
- Media20%
- Fintech13%
- SaaS13%
- Robotics7%
- Other20%
Stage when they invested
- Seed10%
- Series A7%
- Series B10%
- Series C+3%
Where the companies are
- 🇯🇵 Japan37%
- 🇺🇸 United States27%
- 🇰🇷 South Korea23%
30 companies taken from ZVC's own portfolio page and investment posts, as of Oct 2026. The site lists many more across seven funds.
Co-investors and partners
Funds that invested in the same rounds.
