Ryutaro Hiroshima

Born in New York and raised in San Francisco, Hiroshima graduated from Sophia University with a degree in Business Administration. He began his career at MUFG Bank, working in Tokyo, London, and New York in corporate and M&A finance. He joined Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, where he led landmark capital markets transactions, including Japan’s first yen-denominated bond by Apple and the country’s first green bond by EDF. These efforts earned the firm IFR’s “Yen House of the Year” award in 2015 and 2017.

In 2020, he founded Mars Growth Capital in Singapore, serving as CEO for both its debt and equity funds. Leveraging AI-driven credit models, he screened over 1,000 startups and invested in more than 50 companies across Southeast Asia and Europe, scaling the firm’s assets under management to over USD 1 billion.

Since 2025, Hiroshima has also been involved in domestic initiatives aimed at supporting wage growth and productivity in Japan. As part of this effort, he joined a project to develop a cloud-based SaaS platform that uses "Engagement Stock", an AI-powered phantom stock system designed to drive innovation through human capital engagement.

As General Partner of Type One Japan, he now leads the Japanese expansion of Los Angeles–based Type One Ventures. He enables institutional investors, family offices, and corporate partners in Japan to gain direct access to top-tier startups in AI, space tech, and other frontier technologies—bridging Japan with the global innovation ecosystem.