UpdataNOW 2026 opens Oct 21 online with DataRealism theme

UpdataNOW is positioned as one of Japan's largest business conferences, with the organizer saying more than 10,000 businesspeople join each year. This year's edition carries the theme "Data Realism in the AI Era," framed by WingArc 1st not as a question of which AI model to use but as the building of an ecosystem where people, organizations, and systems coexist. The company says it will present the theme through its "DataRealism" perspective, with concrete examples of data use at the front lines.

The program spreads across a full day. A keynote brings together IPA's Michitaka Tsuda, Toyota Motor's Naoki Yamamura, and Daiwa House Industry's Masaki Kawaguchi with WingArc 1st's CEO and CTO to discuss what the company calls Japan's "offense and defense" in AI and data. A special lecture by Takahiro Anno, a member of the House of Councillors, AI engineer, and SF author, addresses new forms of decision-making. Separate tracks feature academics, a privacy commissioner, and user companies including Komatsu Industries, Taisei Corporation, and Amano.

The event's sessions repeatedly frame the challenge less as adopting AI and more as making data usable and trusted, from AI-ready data foundations to governance and digital trust. Whether that framing lands with attendees may depend on how much the showcased cases, such as Komatsu Industries' roughly 500,000 electronic documents a year or HENNGE's 100-fold growth in AI use in one year, offer transferable lessons.