SoftBank Generative AI Idea Contest | About Us

Applications are now closed.
Thank you very much for all the ideas.

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Transforming Society
and the Future with
the
Power of Generative AI.

Generative AI continues to evolve, and the era of
AI agents autonomously performing tasks is about to arrive.
AI capable of deeply understanding vast amounts of
complex information and operating continuously,
24 hours a day, 365 days a year, will fundamentally
transform operational efficiency and decision-making.
The impact of those changes will likely transform society
as a whole on an unprecedented scale.

SoftBank Group Representative
Masayoshi Son

About

Your Ideas
Can Shape Society.

Take the first step toward overcoming future challenges through the power of generative AI!
Ideas that utilize the autonomous action and decision-making capabilities of
AI agents will become a decisive driving force broadly permeating society.
We are looking forward to students eager to tackle real social issues using their creative thinking skills.

FIRST
PRIZE

Award of
million yen

Overview

Name

SoftBank Generative AI Idea Contest

Application period

August 18 (Mon.) at 9:00
to October 16 (Thu.), 2025 at 18:00

Prizes

First prize

10 million yen

Additional prizes will be awarded to
the 2nd through 100th place winners.
(Total prizes: approximately 20 million yen)

All applicants

Certificate of
participation (PDF)
to be distributed

Application details

We are seeking the following types of ideas that utilize
generative AI technologies
— including AI agents

・
Ideas solving social or everyday life issues
・
Ideas promoting innovation and productivity
improvements in companies^*

[Note]

*
The target organization could be a school, a club, a research lab, or something similar.

Materials to be submitted

Text data describing the idea
(form entry)

[Note]

*
Secondary and subsequent screening stages are planned to include presentation-based screening (documentation required).

Participation fee

Free
(applicants are responsible
for all costs associated
with preparing
to participate in the contest)

Application requirements

Excerpted from Application Rules
(for other conditions, please refer to the Application Rules)

Article 2. Eligibility

1.
Contest applicants must meet all of the following requirements. Furthermore, when applying as a group, all group members must meet each of the following requirements.
- (1)
  Applicants must reside in Japan or possess a Japanese residence and be a student at a university, graduate school, or technical college established in Japan.
- (2)
  Applicants must be between 18 years of age and older and less than 30 years old as of April 1, 2025.
- (3)
  Applicants must not be an executive or staff member of a private corporation, national or local government, or other organizations. However, this does not include persons (hired part-time, etc.) who are primarily employed for a fixed period on an hourly wage basis according to auxiliary or temporary business needs.
2.
Applications may be submitted by individuals or groups (up to five people) (hereinafter, the corresponding individual for an individual application and each individual group member for a group application shall be referred to as the "Applicant"). Applications from individuals or groups not meeting the eligibility requirements will be deemed invalid.
3.
Applicants may be asked to confirm their identity during the screening process.

How to apply

Please check the Application Rules
before applying through the following form

Applications Closed

[Notes]

*
There are no limits on the number of applications.
*
When applying as a group, please apply under the name of the group representative.

Screening format

[Primary screening]

Document-based
screening

Successful candidates
will be notified by email
in late October 2025
(100 entries will be accepted)

[Secondary screening]

Online presentation
screening

Presentations are
scheduled to be held
around mid-November 2025
(10 entries
will be accepted)

[Final screening]

In-person presentation
screening

In-person presentations are
scheduled to be held in December 2025
Presentations are scheduled to be delivered
to
SoftBank Group management

We will evaluate the ideas based on the following criteria:

・
Whether the potential of generative AI and AI agents has been thoroughly explored
・
Whether the idea will lead to the release of innovative new services, improvement in service quality, or enhancement of operational efficiency

Handling of rights and private information

Excerpted from Application Rules
(for other conditions, please refer to the Application Rules)

Article 4. Rights Concerning
the Application Content

1.
At the time of application, applicants agree to transfer all new intellectual property rights (including copyrights (including rights under Articles 27 and 28 of the Copyright Act), the right to obtain a patent, the right to obtain a utility model registration, the right to obtain a design registration, and all other intellectual property rights) concerning the content of their application to SoftBank Group Corp. via the Operator.
2.
The Applicant shall not exercise the moral right of an author with respect to the application content.
3.
The application content may be freely edited, revised, duplicated, or distributed, etc. at the discretion of the Sponsor or Operator without requiring the Applicant to be notified, and the Applicant will not take any action that interferes with such free usage.
4.
The Applicant may not make any claim for compensation regarding the intellectual property rights of the application content or for compensation for the use of the application content by the Sponsor or parties designated by the Sponsor except for the distribution established in Article 5, Paragraph 6.
5.
The Applicant must guarantee that the application content does not infringe on the rights of third parties (including, but not limited to, copyrights, moral rights of an author, patents, designs, trademarks, trade secrets, contracts, portrait rights or privacy rights, and other intellectual property rights).
6.
The Applicant must not disclose or leak to third parties any information concerning the implementation of the Contest, confidential information obtained during the Contest, and information about submitted ideas and deliverables.

Article 5. Handling of
Intellectual Property Rights

1.
Regarding the intellectual property rights transferred to the Sponsor through the Operator, the Intellectual Property Group of SoftBank Group Corp. may consider and file patent applications. The Applicant will not be notified at the time of application but will be informed of the application number at a later date once the application has been filed.
2.
When filing a patent application, the Sponsor will submit an application containing information about the patent including "the name and domicile or residence of the inventor" (the address will list the address of the organization or company, etc. provided on the separate application form rather than the address of the individual Applicant) to the Director-General of the Patent Office pursuant to Article 36, Paragraph 1, Item 2 of the Patent Act. Furthermore, pursuant to Article 64, Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Patent Act, information regarding patents (applications) including information about the matter in question will be published in the Patent Gazette by the Director-General of the Patent Office when one year and six months have passed from the date of the patent application, and the information will also be published in the Patent Gazette when the establishment of the patent right is registered after the patent application examination and decision have been completed pursuant to Article 66, Paragraph 3 of the Patent Act.
3.
In applying to participate in the Contest, the Applicant shall consent to having their name listed in the application documents submitted to the Patent Office, in accordance with a patent application linked to the application content, as the name of the inventor and published in the unexamined patent publication bulletin issued by the Patent Office one year and six months from the application.
4.
The Sponsor will decide whether to file an application with the Patent Office for an examination to obtain a patent. Moreover, depending on the results of the examination by the Patent Office, the acquisition of a patent right may not be possible. The Sponsor and Operator will not respond to any inquiries regarding the status or results of the examination application to the Patent Office.
5.
Manuscript review by the inventor will be omitted due to the inclusion of confidential matters in the specification.
6.
If a patent is registered and licensing income or capital gains (hereinafter, the "Profit") are obtained as a result of the Sponsor licensing or transferring the patent to a third party, one-third of the Profit, after deducting reasonable costs incurred by the Sponsor (such as patent application fees, rights management expenses, and content- related costs), shall be distributed to the inventor.
7.
When issuing payment under Paragraph 6, the Sponsor will notify the recipient. If it is reasonably determined that the inventor cannot be contacted at the time such payment is made, the Profit will not be paid to the inventor.
8.
The Sponsor may add examples of invention applications for the purpose of accurately describing the invention details of the submitted idea in the application documents and obtaining strong patent rights. The inventor may not raise any objections to the content of the application documents.
9.
If the Sponsor submits an application for design registration, the Applicant will be notified separately.

Article 6. Handling of
Private Information

1.
The Sponsor and Operator will use the private information of the Applicant only within the scope necessary to run the Contest, conduct screening, notify the Applicant about the examination results, engage in public relations activities (including the announcement of examination results and promotional activities), and other actions to implement the Contest. The Operator may also use the information to send various notifications.
2.
The Sponsor and the Operator may provide the Applicant's personal information—such as name, contact information, affiliation, application content (including text, materials, videos, etc.), and bank account details necessary for prize payment—to carefully selected subcontractors within the scope necessary to achieve the purposes outlined in the preceding paragraph. The tasks entrusted to such subcontractors may include screening and evaluation activities as stipulated in Article 3, Paragraph 6. In such cases, the Sponsor and the Operator shall require the subcontractors to handle personal information appropriately and shall exercise necessary and appropriate supervision over them.
3.
The Sponsor and Operator will not disclose or provide private information to third parties without the consent of the Applicant except when pursuant to laws and regulations.
4.
Details concerning the handling of private information will be established in the privacy policies of the Sponsor and Operator.

Other

Excerpted from Application Rules
(for other conditions, please refer to the Application Rules)

Article 3. Application Content

1.
The application content must be newly conceived by the Applicant and unpublished in Japan. Content which has already been publicly released may not be submitted.
2.
Consulting with or receiving support from third parties, outsourcing the work, or submitting a project that simply reuses content automatically generated with generative AI is prohibited (applicants may utilize and refer to generative AI, etc. in submitting their application).
3.
The Applicant will be required to apply in accordance with the separately specified application format and method. Applications that do not conform to the specified application format and method will be deemed invalid.
4.
Changes and revisions to the application content are not permitted after the application period has ended.
5.
The application content must be created in Japanese or English.
6.
The application content may be reviewed and evaluated not only by the Sponsor and the Operator but also by third parties deemed appropriate by the Sponsor or the Operator. Such third parties may include contractors and officers and employees of group companies of the Sponsor or the Operator.
7.
In the preliminary screening of this contest, generative AI may be used to summarize application content and provide reference evaluations. However, the submitted materials will not be used to train AI models, and any AI-generated output will be used solely as an aid in the review process. All final evaluations and selections will be conducted entirely by human judges.

Article 8. Disclaimer

1.
The Sponsor and Operator will not respond to any inquiries regarding the screening and results of applications including the number of applications.
2.
The Sponsor and Operator will not be responsible for any costs incurred by the Applicant in applying to the Contest.
3.
The Sponsor and Operator will bear no responsibility whatsoever for the distribution of prize money between group members when the Applicant participates as a group and any license income or capital gains as established in Article 5, Paragraph 6.
4.
If the Sponsor and Operator are unable to contact the Applicant (in the case of a group entry, (i) it will be the representative for receiving the total prize money if a member of said group is nominated as the representative or (ii) each corresponding Applicant if the group selects to have the prize money divided equally (fractional amounts rounded up to the nearest whole number) for each Applicant) when awarding the prize money and reasonably determine that the prize money cannot be awarded, said prize will not be awarded to the corresponding Applicant.
5.
Any entries suspected of infringing the rights of third parties (including, but not limited to, copyrights, moral rights of an author, patents, designs, trademarks, trade secrets, contracts, portrait rights or privacy rights, and other intellectual property rights) or suspected of being automatically generated may have their prizes withdrawn even after the screening results.
6.
If it is determined that the application does not meet the eligibility requirements (including but not limited to applications submitted by individuals residing outside Japan or affiliated with educational institutions established outside Japan), or if the contact information provided at the time of application is inaccurate and the Sponsor and Operator reasonably determine that the Applicant cannot be contacted, the application shall be deemed invalid, and the Sponsor and Operator shall delete the corresponding application content and related information. The Applicant shall not raise any objection to such action.
7.
If the Sponsor and Operator reasonably determine that an Applicant has engaged in acts which fall under Article 7 and other prohibited items, they may prohibit the Applicant's participation in this Contest without prior notification. Furthermore, if the Sponsor, Operator, or third parties incur damages, the Applicant will assume all legal liability and must compensate the Sponsor, Operator, and third parties for all damages, losses, and costs, etc. (including legal fees to a reasonable extent).
8.
In the unlikely event that a third party files a claim for infringement of rights, compensation for damage, or other lawsuit or objection regarding the content of an application, the Applicant will be responsible for resolving the dispute at their own expense, and the Sponsor and Operator will bear no responsibility for any damages suffered as a result of the Applicant entering this Contest.
9.
The Sponsor and Operator may change, discontinue, or cancel the details of this Contest without notice.
10.
All applications to this Contest and the provision of related information shall be deemed to have occurred within Japan, and all matters related to the Contest shall be governed by the laws of Japan.

Application rules

See here for the SoftBank
Generative AI Idea Contest
Application Rules

Presented by

SoftBank Group Corp.

Operated by

SoftBank Corp.
(Subcontractor: Givery, Inc.)

Inquiries

For inquiries regarding this contest,
please click here.

Deepen your understanding
of generative AI

Learn the basics through videos

Learn more with Axross Recipe

(Free IDs for the first 30,000 contest applicants^*)

[Note]

*
The ID for the Axross Recipe issued for free will be valid until December 31, 2025

Please check the Application Rules
before applying through the following form.

Applications are
now closed.

FAQ

What kind of contest is this?

This contest seeks innovative ideas utilizing generative AI technologies — including AI agents — from university, graduate school, and technical college students. The goal is to discover ideas arising from flexible thinking, while further accelerating the penetration and utilization of generative AI and AI agents in Japan.

Are there any restrictions on application requirements?

Applicants must meet all of the following criteria. (For as a group applications, all members must meet each requirement.)

・
Applicants must reside in Japan or possess a Japanese residence and be students at a university, graduate school, or technical college established in Japan.
・
Applicants must be aged between 18 and under 30 as of April 1, 2025.
・
Applicants must not be executives or staff members of private corporations, national or local governments, or other organizations. However, this does not include individuals primarily employed on an hourly basis for temporary or auxiliary tasks (part-time employees, etc.).

Is there a participation fee?

Participation is free. However, participants must cover their own preparation costs, such as material creation and communication fees.

What kind of ideas can be submitted?

Ideas that utilize generative AI technologies — including AI agents
— may include:

-
Ideas solving social or everyday life issues
-
Ideas promoting innovation and productivity improvements in companies^*

[Note]

*
The target organization could be a school,club, research lab, or something similar.

Are any prohibited matters when submitting ideas?

Direct submission of automatically generated content is prohibited. While generative AI can be referenced, submissions must be independently organized and developed by applicants.Additionally, ideas submitted must be original creations by the applicant(s) and unpublished in Japan. Previously published ideas are ineligible.Please consult the Application Rules for details.

Can existing open-source or research paper ideas be referenced?

Such resources may be referenced, but submissions must be independently organized and developed by the applicants.

Can supervising faculty members or mentors (non-students) be appointed when thinking up ideas for the contest?

This is not permitted. Consulting third parties, outsourcing work, or submitting content that simply reuses automatically generated content is prohibited.

Can previously entered or rejected works from other contests be submitted?

Such works cannot be submitted. Ideas must be original creations by the applicant(s) and unpublished in Japan. Previously published ideas are ineligible.

I am Japanese, but I do not reside in Japan. Can I apply from overseas?

Applications from overseas are not accepted. Applicants must reside in Japan or possess a Japanese residence and be currently enrolled at a university, graduate school, or technical college established in Japan.

What materials must be submitted when applying?

You will be required to enter a description of your idea in the application form.

[Note]

*
Applicants selected for secondary screening must submit presentation materials.

Are there any restrictions on the number of applications?

There are no limits. Individuals and groups may submit multiple applications.

Are there important points to consider when applying as a group?

The group representative must submit the application, and all members must satisfy the application requirements. Prize money will be awarded either as a lump sum to the representative or equally distributed among members (fractional amounts rounded up).

Can the contents of an application be changed after submission?

Once submitted, application contents cannot be modified.

What about rights related to submitted ideas?

Applicants agree to transfer all intellectual property rights (including copyright, right to obtain patents, utility model registrations, design registration, and other intellectual property rights) of submitted content to SoftBank Group Corp. via the operator. The Intellectual Property Group of the SoftBank Group Corp. may consider patent applications. If a patent is registered and licensing income or capital gains ("transaction profit") arise from licensing or transferring the patent, one-third of the amount, after deducing reasonable related costs (for example, cost of the patent application, cost of rights management, and costs related to the contest, etc.), will be be distributed to the inventor.For more details, please consult the Application Rules.

What is the schedule for contest screening?

Screening will follow this schedule:

-
Primary screening (document-based): Candidates selected for secondary screening (100 entries) will be notified by email in late October 2025.
-
Secondary screening (online presentations): Scheduled for mid-November 2025 (10 entries to be selected).
-
Final screening (in-person presentations): Scheduled to be delivered to SoftBank Group management in December 2025.

How will applicants be notified of screening results?

Applicants will be notified by email.

Are there any special benefits from contest participation?

All applicants will receive a certificate of participation (PDF).

Can inquiries be made about application contents or screening results?

Inquiries about application content, screening criteria, or results cannot be answered.

Who should be contacted for inquiries?

Please contact us here for any inquiries.

Can I apply if I am enrolled in a school in Japan but currently studying abroad or staying overseas for travel?

Applications from outside Japan are not eligible.
This is because of potential conflicts with data protection regulations in other regions, such as the GDPR, and therefore we are unable to accept applications submitted from overseas.

Are there specific evaluation criteria?

Ideas will be evaluated based on the following points, as set out in the Judging Format:

-
The extent to which the potential of generative AI and AI agents has been considered
-
The contribution of the idea to launching innovative new services, improving quality, or enhancing operational efficiency

Specifically, the following elements should be clearly reflected in your idea and effectively communicated to the judges:

-
Use of generative AI and AI agents
-
Feasibility
-
Originality and novelty
-
Effectiveness and impact

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