If you have never met Kenta Yasukawa, the co-founder and CTO of Soracom, you’ve missed out on a happy experience. I have never had a conversation with him where he wasn’t smiling and excited about technology. At Soracom, he has led deployment of the industry’s most advanced cloud-native telecom platform, designed specifically for the needs of connected devices. Before co-founding Soracom, Kenta served as a solutions architect with AWS and conducted research for connected homes and cars at Ericsson (News - Alert) Research in Tokyo and Stockholm. He holds a Ph.D. in engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, with additional studies in computer science at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
In case you have not heard of the company in the ten years since its incorporation, Soracom gives organizations and teams around the world the advanced technology they need to bring new connected experiences to life. Soracom’s global IoT platform combines highly resilient cellular connectivity with advanced cloud integrations, network security features, emerging AI capabilities, and expert support that let customers accelerate deployment, succeed at scale, and make things happen.
Carl Ford (News - Alert): Soracom has been around for ten years as a global MVNO providing IoT connectivity, but you very recently updated the company's vision statement to “Making things happen for a world that works together.” What does this mean, and how does it compare with Soracom’s mission during its first decade in business?
Kenta Yasukawa: Our mission really hasn’t changed. Soracom has always existed to serve as a catalyst for the global IoT ecosystem. From day one, we set out to help build a truly connected world where all of us together can achieve more than any of us could imagine on our own.
What has evolved over the last ten years is the scale. In 2015, we were a small startup helping early IoT innovators get their first prototypes online. Today, we’re a public company supporting global enterprises as they deploy and manage millions of devices across multiple continents.
Our new vision statement, “Making things happen,” captures both ideas. We’re still here to empower innovation and collaboration, but now on a global scale. Soracom’s role is to help our customers bring their ideas to life and make things happen.
CF: The updated vision statement also suggests a more collaborative, maturing IoT market. Historically, Soracom has been very innovator-focused, but how has your global constituency of customers and partners evolved and broadened in recent years, and what has driven that expansion?
KY: We’re still very much innovator-focused, but the definition of “innovator” has expanded. There’s a tremendous amount of innovation happening inside large enterprises and among fast-growing scale-ups tackling challenges in areas like healthcare, payments, and agriculture.
From the beginning, Soracom’s platform was built in the cloud to help teams innovate faster. We designed it to move at the pace of technology rather than telecom and to make it easy for customers to connect devices and integrate directly with the cloud resources they rely on for data storage and analysis.
That approach has really driven our global expansion. Our goal has always been to help customers deploy quickly and scale successfully, and our success continues to be a reflection of theirs. Many of our largest customers today start with just a few connections and a great idea.
CF: A question every technology has to consider these days: How can leveraging AI help you follow through on your “Making things happen” mantra?
KY: AI is as foundational to the future of IoT as the cloud. AI is what was missing in IoT. Just as cloud infrastructure gives developers the ability to scale faster and build smarter, AI now gives them the ability to make sense of the massive amount of data their devices generate.
Now that generative AI platforms are widely available, Soracom is taking the lead in making them part of its IoT ecosystem. We’ve built direct integrations with services like OpenAI, Google (News - Alert) Gemini, and Amazon Bedrock, just as we did earlier with AWS and Microsoft Azure.
For us, AI isn’t just a feature; it’s part of how we help our customers move faster, operate smarter, and truly make things happen.
CF: Can you provide some examples of how you are applying AI technology in services like Soracom Flux, Soracom Query, and more?
KY: We’ve started bringing AI directly into the Soracom platform. Last year, we introduced Soracom Flux, a low-code IoT app builder, and Soracom Query, which lets customers explore and visualize their network data just by asking questions in natural language.
Since then, we’ve added video analysis tools and ready-made IoT app templates and, in July, we announced an enterprise agreement with OpenAI. It’s still early, but we’re building these capabilities now so our customers can stay focused on creating and scaling great products.
CF: Your global constituency has come to include some very big names – Toyota for example. Can you tell us more about how you are working with Toyota?
KY: Soracom and Toyota have worked on various projects. Recently, Soracom joined the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium, which brings together leaders from across the industry to shape the future of connected vehicles.
We’ve been collaborating on a demonstration project called IRIGATE, focused on delivering stable, flexible connectivity for the next generation of connected cars. In 2024, we presented a joint proof of concept that highlighted secure authentication and networking between vehicles and the cloud.
It’s an important step toward enabling seamless, secure, and long-lasting connectivity for automotive ecosystems, helping the next generation of connected cars maintain a trusted connection to their OEM cloud backend.
CF: Is automotive/connected car a vertical of emerging growth opportunity for Soracom, and what other vertical markets do you see as increasingly important for future growth?
KY: Definitely. Automotive and connected car technology are emerging as major growth areas for Soracom, along with video monitoring and AI-driven analysis. These are all use cases where advanced connectivity capabilities like built-in authentication and AI integrations can really transform how systems operate in the field.
We also see strong demand across utilities and energy, point-of-sale systems, and healthcare. Each of these sectors depends on secure, scalable data connectivity, and that’s exactly where Soracom’s platform delivers value.
CF: Showing proof of AI’s value is becoming important. What kind of real benefits have you and your customers seen from using AI, and how do you think it will affect the broader value proposition for expanding IoT deployments?
KY: AI is already changing what’s possible in IoT. We’re seeing entirely new use cases, particularly in areas like video analysis, where devices can now interpret what they see in real time and trigger automated responses without human intervention.
It’s also dramatically accelerating time to market. By expanding access to coding and workflow tools, AI allows smaller teams to build faster and makes it easier for nontechnical members to manage large deployments once they’re live.
A great example is our collaboration with Otsuka Warehouse. Using Soracom Flux and Google Gemini, the joint development team went from whiteboard to live proof of concept in just one month. Previously, it required data collection, training machine learning models using data and system integration, but Soracom Flux enabled them to build an app skipping all the hurdles. That project showed how AI can extend IoT’s value from basic monitoring to intelligent, responsive systems that can make things happen on their own.
CF: Much early AI adoption has involved using generative AI, but is there also a role for Soracom to play as your customers and partners embrace emerging agentic AI and physical AI capabilities in their IoT deployments?
KY: Absolutely. As AI continues to evolve, we see a clear role for systems that don’t just interpret data, but act on it. In IoT deployments, this means connected devices and machines that can sense their environment, reason about what’s happening, and take action.
For example, imagine a warehouse where the conveyor system, forklifts, and shelving robots work together as autonomous agents: Sensors detect inventory, robots negotiate handoffs, and an overall coordinating agent re-routes tasks in real time if an unexpected congestion or machine fault occurs. Or consider a factory floor where a quality inspection camera uses physical AI to detect a faulty item and immediately stop the production line or kick off a repair job without human intervention.
Soracom's role is to enable those kinds of applications at scale. We provide secure, cloud-native connectivity and AI integrations to ensure that those agentic systems operate reliably whether they are connected vehicles, industrial machines, or smart infrastructure, and securely access remote devices when needed to take action. There's an enormous opportunity when we can trust devices to go beyond reporting status and act autonomously in coordination with others to deliver outcomes rather than just data.
CF: Let’s talk about cybersecurity. You use SQL systems, and SQL is historically vulnerable to security threats. How do you mitigate security risks, and can AI serve an important function there as well?
KY: First, it’s important to clarify that there’s no inherent vulnerability in SQL itself. The risk comes when systems process user input directly as SQL commands, which can open the door to injection attacks. We use NoSQL databases for most of our infrastructure. When we make use of a SQL database, we design our systems so that SQL queries are never executed directly without server-side check, and we layer in strong authentication, encryption, and access controls throughout our architecture.
Soracom takes a multi-layered approach to security, combining secure APIs, encrypted communication, and rigorous internal controls. We also hold SOC 2 Type 2 certification, which reflects our commitment to operational integrity and continuous monitoring.
AI absolutely plays a role here as well. We’ve been using machine learning in our own infrastructure for years to detect anomalies, identify unusual traffic patterns, and automatically scale capacity to maintain performance and reliability. AI helps us stay proactive, not reactive, in keeping customer data and networks secure.
CF: Let’s wrap up by delving into another important technology evolution. The first eSIMs based on the SGP.32 standard are starting to roll out. Do you see this as a big moment for the IoT sector, and can you describe the benefits you see of SGP.32, and how it will shape the future of IoT?
KY: SGP.32 is an important step forward for IoT, mainly because it standardizes how the user can remotely trigger devices to download and manage connectivity profiles. That makes it easier to scale globally, simplify logistics, and stay compliant across regions.
Of course, it will take time for the broader ecosystem to align. Carriers have legitimate operational and commercial considerations as they adapt to this new model, and adoption will naturally vary by region and business model. What matters most is that industry is moving in the right direction toward greater flexibility and collaboration.
At Soracom, we’re ready for that shift. Our new Connectivity Hypervisor already supports SGP.32-compliant eUICC SIMs and allows customers to manage multiple profiles through a single platform, including third-party profiles. In fact, the collaboration I mentioned with Toyota already includes validation of SGP.32-based dynamic profile provisioning using the Connectivity Hypervisor.