ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Yoshihisa Suzuki, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that ITOCHU and ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (Satoshi Kikuchi, President & CEO; headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; hereinafter "CTC") have acquired 24.5% of the issued shares of WingArc1st Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Jun Tanaka, President and CEO; hereinafter “WingArc”), which offers software and services supporting companies’ data utilization, via their co-founded company, IW.DX Partners Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masato Horiuchi, President & CEO; investment ratio: ITOCHU 66.6%, CTC 33.4%; hereinafter “IW.DX Partners”).

With today’s technological innovations such as AI and big data, the fourth industrial revolution is advancing across a number of industries. As seen in the rapid changes in industrial structures, corporate organizations, and work styles, the speeding up of companies’ decision-making and service improvements is urgently required and the importance of utilizing data the companies possess is growing.
Against this background, companies’ investment in data analysis is increasing. Global sales of data analysis platforms were 189.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 and are forecast to reach 274.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.^*1 Likewise, the market in Japan is expected to be over 400 billion yen in 2023, and companies that offer data analysis solutions are growing rapidly.

WingArc is an industry-leading pioneer which has been offering software and services that support companies’ data utilization for many years. It has supported over 20,000 companies’ operational reforms, taking the largest share of the form tools and data aggregation/analysis/visualization tools markets in Japan.^*2 In addition, based on its vision of changing the world and shaping the future through empowering data and innovating in business, WingArc has been providing solutions that meet the digitalization needs of different industries.

In September 2018, ITOCHU entered into a capital and business alliance with WingArc and entered the data utilization support business. By combining its business know-how from various industries and the data utilization technologies of WingArc, ITOCHU has been developing solutions tailored for each industry and has focused its efforts on the digital transformation (DX) business that supports companies’ digitalization.
With this additional investment in WingArc via IW.DX Partners, ITOCHU will further accelerate its DX business, with the aim of expanding this area of the business.
In addition, CTC will continue to engage in the DX business together with WingArc and ITOCHU, using the know-how CTC has gained through building big data, AI, and other data analysis-related systems.