Taku Toguchi knew he wanted a career in artificial intelligence as far back as when he was a teenager.
Now 36, the college dropout and serial entrepreneur has joined the ranks of Japanese founders building fortunes in AI, thanks to a stock-market rally that turned his company into one of the nation’s most richly valued.
AI inside Inc., which went public in December and specializes in digitizing handwritten documents, has been among the biggest beneficiaries of surging investor optimism toward companies that use AI and other technologies to enable remote working. While some analysts have questioned whether the stock’s almost ninefold gain is sustainable, AI inside has ambitious plans to expand outside Japan and into other business lines.