MPower Partners announces its investment in Mantra

June 26th, 2024; Tokyo, Japan: MPower Partners Fund, Japan’s first ESG-focused global
venture capital fund, has invested in Mantra Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), a Manga-focused machinetranslation technology company.
Manga has been a much sought-after content worldwide. Currently, the Japanese domestic
comics market is estimated to be approximately 700BN JPY, with consistent sales growth inhistorical years observed despite the general downtrend we see in publishing. However, lessthan 10% of Japanese manga content is translated into foreign languages real time, leaving
many international readers without authentic access to the latest content Traditional mangatranslation processes require significant manpower and are extremely time-consuming.
Accurately translating manga's unique expressions and cultural nuances is particularly
challenging, creating huge lead times until translation rollout. Consequently, many works remain
untranslated, leading non-Japanese readers to seek pirated versions. It is estimated thatmanga piracy sites in North America and Asia receive 1 billion cumulative visits in a given
month, more than the total global access to TikTok.
Mantra offers an AI-powered cloud translation tool "Mantra Engine", which includes proprietary
image processing technology tailored for manga formats and high-precision translation using
the latest LLM (Large Language Model). Mantra Engine, which can understand context
throughout the pages and appropriately translate unique Japanese expressions and culturalnuances, has been adopted by domestic and international publishers, translation companies,and distribution businesses. To date, the tool has streamlined the translation workflow ofapproximately 100,000 pages (500 volumes) of manga per month .
For their innovative Engine, Mantra has successfully partnered with major Japanese publishers,
who hold the intellectual property rights to blockbuster titles. This early market trust serves as a
powerful foundation for Mantra Engine’s further technological growth, as access to a wide
content catalog will allow for exponential translation accuracy improvement.
MPower led this equity fundraising round, believing in Mantra's mission of "delivering mangaacross language barriers." Mantra's technology is sure to bring significant growth in theoverseas manga market and contribute to a fair compensation mechanism to content holders
and creators, not to mention unprecedented speed of access to readers worldwide MPower is
excited to support Mantra's growth, through business strategy development and instillment oflong-term corporate values and sustainable growth through ESG implementation.
Comments from Shonosuke Ishiwatari, Mantra CEO

We will be focusing on expanding global business in the near future, in this context, we feel very
encouraged to have received support from MPower Partners, who’s an investor with strengths inglobal connection and ESG integration. Even before the investment, we received a lot of
constructive advice about our business from the MPower team, particularly from Seki Miwa andYe Xia, and each discussion was very exciting. With this funding, we aim to further deepen ourcollaboration with our investors and accelerate the R&D as well as business promotion ofentertainment AI translation.
Mantra’s Press Release regarding this round (Japanese)
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000032.000059295.html

About Mantra
Location: Hyogo, Kobe, Chuo Ward, Minatojima Minamimachi, 2 Chome−1-11 3F
Japan, Tokyo, Bunkyo City
CEO: Ichiwatari Shonosuke, Ph.D.
Business: Research and development of machine translation technology for manga
Corporate URL: https://mantra.co.jp/index_en.html

About MPower Partners
MPower Partners Fund is Japan’s first ESG-integrated global venture capital fund that aims
to support entrepreneurs providing solutions to societal challenges through the power oftechnology, and to promote sustainable growth by incorporating ESG (Environment, Social,Governance) into their core business strategies.
For more information, please visit: https://www.mpower-partners.com
For inquiries, please contact: info@mpower-partners.comThis press release has been prepared for the purpose of providing information to qualified
institutional investors and potential portfolio companies of the Fund, and is not a disclosure
document pursuant to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, and does not constitutea solicitation or recommendation to purchase the Fund.