Mitsui & Co., Ltd. ("Mitsui", Head Office: Tokyo, President and CEO: Kenichi Hori) has announced its investment in NumberAI, Inc. (hereinafter "Numa"), a company that develops and provides AI-powered business transformation tools for car dealerships in the United States. This investment is a part of Numa's $32 million Series B funding round through a third-party allotment of shares, with Mitsui participating as a strategic partner and appointing one director to the board.

Numa develops AI tools that transform traditional dealership operations by automating and streamlining various on-site tasks and customer communications. By combining multiple small-scale generative AI models, Numa enhances dealership efficiency and customer service quality across a range of activities, from handling phone and chat inquiries to scheduling service appointments, managing customer relationships, task management, and workflow design. For example, the implementation of these tools has reduced response times to customer inquiries by over 90%. Previously, differences in response speed and quality among employees significantly impacted customer satisfaction. However, by leveraging generative AI technology, Numa has improved customer retention rates at dealerships and contributed to enhancing the brand value of car manufacturers through improved after-sales service satisfaction. Currently, Numa's services are highly regarded by over 500 dealerships in the United States and Canada, and the company has experienced rapid growth, with sales increasing more than 22-fold from 2020 to 2023.

In its Medium-Term Management Plan 2026, Mitsui has identified Industrial Business Solutions as one of its strategic focuses and aims to form a supply chain solutions business cluster in North America. Through this investment, Mitsui intends to accurately capture the trends in generative AI utilization in the dealership industry, explore the future shape of the next-generation car sales business, and achieve early business transformation in affiliated companies, including car distribution and retail businesses, thereby contributing to the development of our existing businesses.

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