Miku Hirano

CEO, Cinnamon, Inc.

Japan

Winning women Asia-Pacific Miku Hirano

Miku Hirano is the CEO of Cinnamon, Inc., an artificial intelligence (AI) product company, which she founded in Singapore in 2012.

Cinnamon has rapidly grown, driving business by improving customers' productivity. Over the course of its journey, the company’s team has grown to over 200 employees, including over 100 AI researchers, and has expanded its operations to Japan, the US, Vietnam and Taiwan.

With her background in technology and a desire to use it to change the world, Miku started her own company. With her first business, she created a middleware, which enabled the development of iOS, Android or feature phone applications. She later sold the company to mixi.inc., and then founded Cinnamon.

Miku holds an MSc degree in AI from Tokyo University, and is actively engaged in research on recommendation engine, complex networks and clustering. She has won several awards, including the Innovative Software Creation Program (Super Creator Award) presented by Japan’s Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) in 2005 and 2006, the Woman of the Year 2019 Award from Nikkei Woman, the Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award in 2019 and the International Women in Tech Award. She also won the SEGA SAMMY Award at Startup World Cup in 2019 and was also listed in the Top 10 Entrepreneurs by Forbes Japan list.

Miku is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. She is working toward creating a world where people can enjoy their lives, spending more time with their families through the benefits of AI.

“We aim to become a leading global business AI company by increasing the number of AI researchers to over 500 and launching more AI products that will help automate repetitive tasks,” Miku said. “AI can improve people’s productivity, allowing them more freedom to do the things they want and enjoy their lives.”