Itochu and Boston Consulting Group launch digital joint venture

Itochu, a major Japanese trading and investment corporation, has joined forces with consulting giant Boston Consulting Group to launch a new digital transformation consultancy venture.

The new venture will focus on IT and digital technologies and is to be launched next month, pending approval from regulators. Itochu will reportedly have a majority stake in the new venture, which was not named in a press release. The Japanese firm will also choose a president for the venture.

The new joint venture will advise companies on how they can implement effective strategies of digital transformation, and support with the delivery of complex technology change.

In a press release, Boston Consulting Group stated that its role will be in providing consulting expertise and extensive business experience.

The collaboration is led by the firm’s Japanese business. Boston Consulting Group first launched in Tokyo in 1966 (at the time its second base after Boston), today its Japanese wing has around 1,200 consultants and staff. Its digital transformation capabilities are led by BCG X.

This is not the first time Boston Consulting Group has made a significant move into the AI sector, now a booming area of growth. Last year, the consultancy entered into a strategic collaboration with San Francisco-based AI startup Anthropic.

In recent years, AI technology has taken the world by storm, with the complex technology reaching new levels of maturity that will allow businesses to unlock significant extra value. Generative AI in particular – the technology behind wildly popular tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or image creation tools like DALL-E – has become popular in a wide array of business use cases.