Xross Road, a Japan-based Web3 IP incubation and acceleration platform backed by the TV Asahi Group, has announced the successful close of a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round. The capital will fuel the development of its core platform and its AI-powered manga creation engine, HANASEE, which simultaneously launched in closed beta.
Xross Road secured $1.5M in a Pre-seed round.
We’ve secured $1.5M in a pre-seed round to build the next generation of IP creation and distribution through Xross Road and our AI-powered manga platform, HANASEE. Backed by Arbitrum Gaming Ventures on @arbitrum, @decimafund, … pic.twitter.com/1ibxDnMuUU
— Xross Road (@xross__road) February 9, 2026
The Funding Round
The pre-seed round was co-led by Arbitrum Gaming Ventures and Decima Fund, with additional participation from Taisu Ventures and BaboonVC. Arbitrum Gaming Ventures is part of a broader 200 million ARB initiative (approximately $65 million) designed to accelerate gaming and entertainment on the Arbitrum Layer 2 network. Decima Fund, Taisu Ventures, and BaboonVC round out a roster of investors with deep roots in Web3 and gaming venture capital.
What Is Xross Road?
Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Japan, Xross Road describes itself as a community-focused IP incubation and acceleration platform leveraging Web3 technology. Originally designed for Japanese IP fans, the platform aims to expand intellectual property content to a global audience by connecting fans, creators, and enterprises into a single continuous flow.
The platform’s mission tackles a fundamental problem: the IP industry spanning novels, manga, production committees, and distribution is highly fragmented. This fragmentation creates significant time and cost barriers that prevent promising stories from ever being adapted into formats like manga or anime. Xross Road seeks to bridge these gaps through AI-driven tools and blockchain-based infrastructure.
Introducing HANASEE: The AI Manga Engine
At the heart of Xross Road’s vision is HANASEE, a proprietary manga generation system that the company describes as an “AI-agent-based manga creation engine”. Unlike generic image generation tools, HANASEE is built to replicate real professional manga production workflows. The system deploys multiple specialized AI agents, each responsible for different aspects of creation:
- Illustration agents handle character design and visual rendering
- Story composition agents manage narrative structure and pacing
- Panel layout agents ensure visual flow and page-turn rhythm consistent with professional manga standards
The engine is fine-tuned by active manga artists, preserving the storytelling rhythm and quality expected in professional publications rather than simply generating static images. Creators interact with the system through a dialogue-based interface, guiding the AI agents directly to shape their creative vision.
HANASEE’s key differentiator is its ability to maintain complete character and world consistency across long-form manga a major challenge for general-purpose AI image tools. The platform can rapidly transform undiscovered novels or screenplays into high-quality manga, dramatically reducing the time and cost of traditional adaptation.
How It Fits Into the Broader Ecosystem
Content produced through HANASEE is designed to integrate directly into Xross Road’s core platform infrastructure. This enables a seamless pipeline from IP creation to distribution, with plans for:
- Public release and sales of manga content created on the platform
- Revenue sharing between creators and the platform
- Blockchain-based rights management, planned for early 2026, to ensure transparent attribution and fair monetization
For IP holders including novelists, studios, and publishers HANASEE offers a cost-effective and rapid option to adapt original IP into manga format for market testing. If an IP performs well in manga form, it can then be expanded into other formats such as anime, games, or merchandise. Xross Road is actively seeking partnerships and conducting pilot programs with IP holders to explore these monetization models.
The TV Asahi Connection
Xross Road is backed by the TV Asahi Group, one of Japan’s major television networks. This relationship provides the startup with credibility and potential distribution channels within Japan’s massive media ecosystem. Founder and CEO Yosuke Utsumi emphasized the vision behind the platform.
Why This Matters for the IP Industry
The global anime and manga market continues to expand rapidly, yet the pipeline from original story to finished, distributed product remains bottlenecked by production costs, talent shortages, and lengthy production timelines. HANASEE’s AI-agent approach could significantly lower these barriers, enabling more stories to reach audiences faster.
By combining Web3 infrastructure with AI-powered creation tools and fan-first incentives, Xross Road positions itself at the intersection of several high-growth trends: the creator economy, AI content generation, and blockchain-based digital rights management.
