Coconala, the Tokyo-listed online marketplace for skills and freelance services, agreed on October 7, 2026 to buy 51% of Acrosstudio, a Shibuya-based AI consulting and implementation firm, for ¥872 million (about $5.8 million). Coconala signed a share transfer agreement with Acrosstudio's shareholders, five individuals according to M&A Online, and plans to complete the transfer on October 30.
Acrosstudio will become a Coconala subsidiary and the core business of the AI Company, a unit Coconala created on September 1 when it reorganised into an in-house company structure. Acrosstudio will keep its current management, and its existing customer service and support arrangements will not change, according to IT Business Today.
What Acrosstudio built
Acrosstudio was founded in July 2021 and is led by representative director Kazuya Hochi. It describes itself as an AI implementation consultancy that combines three services: consulting to work out a client's problem, engineering that builds AI systems through to production, and forward-deployed engineers who stay with clients until the tools are in daily use and can be run in-house.
Its clients have included trading houses, large real estate groups and beverage makers. The company has also built generative AI products of its own, and its careers page listed 59 employees.
In the fiscal year to June 2026, Acrosstudio reported revenue of ¥1.13 billion (about $7.5 million), operating profit of ¥46 million (about $300,000) and net assets of ¥22 million (about $150,000), according to figures published with the deal. The price for 51% therefore values the whole company at roughly ¥1.7 billion, many times its book value.
Why Coconala is buying
Coconala runs the Coconala Skill Market, where individuals sell services ranging from design to consulting. It says it has more than 620,000 corporate customers and more than 1.4 million registered skill providers, and in July 2026 it began accepting registrations from AI engineers and AI consultants.
The companies listed three areas of cooperation. First, Acrosstudio will use Coconala's customer base, including contacts from Coconala's joint venture with Mizuho Bank, to sell AI implementation and AI agent development to small, midsize and regional companies, not only large enterprises. Second, it will work with Coconala's registered professionals and its IT and professional staffing businesses to recruit more AI engineers and consultants. Third, the two will build AI agents and generative AI products from Acrosstudio's project experience and Coconala's data, and add AI features to Coconala's existing services.
Coconala also said the AI Company will expand from consulting and implementation into AI business process outsourcing.
The founders and the funding
Hochi previously worked at a foreign consulting firm, according to Acrosstudio's recruiting materials, and has spoken about vision-language models for manufacturing at Japanese industry events. Acrosstudio has not disclosed any outside funding, and startup databases list its total funding and valuation as undisclosed.
Coconala did not disclose how it will fund the purchase. The ¥872 million price is roughly 19 times Acrosstudio's operating profit for the last fiscal year.
What happens to customers
Acrosstudio's existing clients should see little immediate change. The company keeps its management team and said it does not plan to change its customer service or support structure after joining the Coconala group.
Over time, Coconala wants Acrosstudio's consultants and engineers to work alongside AI specialists registered on its marketplace, which would let the firm take on more projects than its own staff could handle. The two companies also plan to fold AI features into Coconala's existing services for its own buyers and sellers.
A busy market for AI implementation
Coconala is betting that demand for hands-on help with AI will reach beyond the large companies that have been Acrosstudio's main clients, and that its marketplace and its Mizuho joint venture can bring in smaller customers.
By taking 51% rather than the whole company, Coconala leaves the other 49% with Acrosstudio's existing individual shareholders while gaining control. Neither company disclosed whether Coconala has an option to buy the remaining shares.
