rinna
rinna is a Japanese AI developer that took over Microsoft's Rinna chatbot business in 2020. It later published Japanese language, image-generation and image-text models.
Company & leadership
- Founding leadership
- Zhan “Cliff” Chen was the representative director named at launch. The announcement does not provide a complete founder roster.
- Last verified chief executive
- Joohoun Song was identified as CEO in a July 2024 post by company executive Alex Lagata. This review could not confirm current tenure.
- Published office
- WeWork Shibuya Scramble Square, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. The location is documented in the company launch and an executive interview.
- Ownership information
- The 2020 announcement describes separation from Microsoft. Current shareholders and control were not verified.
The chatbot work predates the company
Microsoft's Rinna research combined social conversation, speech and vision before rinna became a separate company. A 2018 prototype used an Empathy Vision model to comment on a scene and full-duplex speech to manage conversational timing.
The business moved to rinna in 2020
The new company took over the Rinna chatbot and related AI business. Its launch announcement linked the separation to Japanese market needs and demand for custom characters. It recorded a June incorporation date and announced the transfer in August.
A published research program covers several modalities
rinna's researchers documented their Japanese pretrained-model program in a 2024 LREC-COLING paper. The work covers language models, image-text representation and image generation. These releases make parts of the research available independently of the chatbot product.
Later releases adapt several model families
The public catalog includes rinna-trained GPT and GPT-NeoX models, then adaptations of Llama, Qwen and Gemma. Their licenses differ. A model's presence in rinna's catalog does not mean that rinna developed its upstream architecture or original weights.
Published weights and hosted products have different evidence
Practical guidance. This guide lists verified weight releases. Quantized files stay with the corresponding model. Current corporate leadership, ownership and hosted-product availability could not all be confirmed from accessible primary material. Historical product announcements are not treated as proof of a current API.