Japanese crowdsourcing platform ‘Crowdworks’ raises $10.7 million

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Tokyo-based Crowdworks, the startup behind the crowdsourcing platform of the same name, announced today it has raised 1.1 biillion yen ($10.7 million) from CyberAgent, DG Incubation, and Dentsu Digital Fund [1]. These investors will reportedly aid the company in its global business expansion and help diversify its services. Prior to this funding, the company raised 300 million yen (about $3 million) from Itochu Technology Ventutes, DG Incubation, and Suneight Investment.

Since its initial launch in late 2011, the company has facilitated crowdsourced tasks from over 18,000 companies, worth a total of over 5 billion yen ($48.8 million). It has acquired 80,000 crowdsourced workers on its platform.

Through partnerships with the aforementioned investors, the company will start running a logo contest campaign that lets users propose designs for celebrities blogs on Ameba, CyberAgent’s blogging platform. In addition, Crowdworks will establish a presence in San Francisco at DG717, a brand new co-working space operated by Digital Garage.

We had previously interviewed (in Japanese) Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida, where he told us how he plans to evolve the business. Please stay tuned for an English translation of that article.


  1. DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese web conglomerate Digital Garage. Dentsu Digital Fund is an initiative of Japanese ad agency Dentsu.