Rakuten Symphony, Inc. raises $2.14M (¥350M)
- Company
- Rakuten Symphony, Inc.
- Round
- Grant
- Amount
- $2.14M (¥350M)
- Investors
- Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)
- Announced
- July 27, 2026
What happened
Rakuten Symphony announced it was selected for a METI grant of up to ¥350 million (about $2.14M) to partly subsidize a project with Kyivstar to expand Open RAN tests from lab validation to field trials in and around Kyiv. The grant covers roughly half the project cost and will fund cloud-native Open RAN/4G–5G testing and evaluation.
Why it matters
A government-backed grant enabling live Open RAN trials with a major operator (Kyivstar) is a practical endorsement of cloud-native RAN approaches and reduces deployment risk, accelerating vendor validation and potential commercial procurement in contested or reconstruction markets.
Source: Rakuten Symphony (press release) / Light Reading coverage
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