KaiseiHamamoto

In 2012, data visualization engineer Kaisei Hamamoto, together with friend Ken Suzuki, co-founded SmartNews — a Tokyo-based app that pioneered a news-recommendation algorithm promising to serve its readers a personalized and politically balanced range of stories. The company’s tagline is “News From All Sides.” Launched in English in the U.S. in 2014 and now available in more than 150 countries, SmartNews said its latest valuation is around $2 billion. “There is a difference between what you want to eat and what you need to eat,” Hamamoto previously told Rest of World. “So in the same sense, in terms of news, what you want to know and what you need to know are different.”