{"id":417191,"date":"2026-02-10T02:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T02:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/417191\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T02:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T02:17:13","slug":"andreessen-horowitz-backs-ai-virtual-character-in-1st-japan-related-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/417191\/","title":{"rendered":"Andreessen Horowitz backs AI virtual character in 1st Japan-related bet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-main img-fluid ImageNew_imageNewImageResponsive__f1VTu\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/cms-image-bucket-productionv3-ap-northeast-1-a7d2.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com\/images\/9\/4.jpeg\" alt=\"20260209N Shizuku AI\" width=\"780\" height=\"auto\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleCaption_newsArticleCaption__fxo8v\" data-trackable=\"caption\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" style=\"display:block\">Shizuku is a character developed by Shizuku AI. The company plans to develop the character as an AI companion. (Screenshot by Ryotaro Yamada)<\/p>\n<p>RYOTARO YAMADA<\/p>\n<p>February 10, 2026 06:21 JST<\/p>\n<p data-dark-mode=\"false\" class=\"Paragraph_paragraph__2p1wC\">PALO ALTO, California &#8212; U.S. venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz has invested in Shizuku AI, a California startup founded by a Japanese entrepreneur, Nikkei learned on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shizuku is a character developed by Shizuku AI. The company plans to develop the character as an AI&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[51576,554,154214,733,4308,48339,12479,28743,51276,154215,86,56,54,55,6251],"class_list":["post-417191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-1st","tag-ai","tag-andreessen","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-backs","tag-bet","tag-character","tag-horowitz","tag-japan-related","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-virtual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}