Wunderbar tops ¥1B raised, expands IP platform Skettt beyond talent
What's the deal? Japan's WunderbarDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, formerly SketttDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, has closed a Series A extension that pushes its total funding past ¥1 billion since founding. The round drew venture debt and other financing from Shizuoka BankDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Japan Finance Corporation's small and medium enterprise unit.
The context: In June 2025, the company raised roughly ¥500 million in its Series A, taking cumulative funding past ¥700 million. It renamed itself from Skettt to Wunderbar on September 1, 2026.
What's the endgame? Wunderbar runs Skettt, an IP marketing platform. Until now it focused on "talent IP" — celebrities and public figures — where it claims a supply-side share above 95%. It is now expanding into character and content IP, including anime, manga, and comics.
Why now? The first step is a tie-up with Tatsunoko ProductionDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the studio behind Speed Racer , Gatchaman , and the Time Bokan series. Wunderbar says it has also signed deals with more than 30 partners, including a major publisher and animation studios.
The company will spend the money on expanding partnerships with IP holders, product development, AI-driven selection and creative tools, and hiring across sales, marketing, and product.
The pitch: Wunderbar argues that IP use in corporate marketing is complex and costly, limited mostly to large companies. It wants to use data and AI to open that up to regional firms, small businesses, and startups, handling planning, selection, production, and rights management end-to-end.
"What we really want to solve is not simply making talent easier to use," said chief executive officer Yoshito Nagao (translated from Japanese). He framed the goal as fixing the "asymmetries" between companies and IP holders around supply chains, pricing, and know-how.
The signal: The move rides Japan's push to treat content as a core industry. Tokyo aims to lift overseas sales of Japanese content to ¥20 trillion by 2033, and Wunderbar wants Skettt to become the "global infrastructure" that channels domestic IP abroad.
Image credit: Wunderbar
