Shinkei Systems
Shinkei Systems is an American robotics company that automates ikejime, the Japanese method of dispatching fish, with a machine. It was founded in 2021 by Saif Khawaja (CEO), joined by Reed Ginsburg (CTO), a former SpaceX engineer, as technical co-founder. With a device called Poseidon that is carried on fishing boats, it dispatches fish on deck just after they are caught, and sells those fish under its own brand, Seremoni. The company is headquartered in El Segundo, California. The name appears to be taken from the Japanese word shinkei, meaning "nerve"※1.
How Poseidon works
Poseidon is a box-shaped device about the size of a refrigerator, installed on the deck of a commercial fishing boat. A fish is fed in head first; cameras and AI identify the species, locate the brain and gills, and decide the processing path. The machine spikes the brain to kill the fish quickly, cuts the gills to bleed it※2, and chills it at once in a half-and-half mix of ice and water. Processing one fish is said to take about six seconds.
Ikejime by hand requires skill and effort, and is hard to apply to large numbers of fish on a boat. Poseidon mechanizes it, aiming to shorten the time the fish suffers and to preserve freshness and flavor. The company states that shelf life is up to three times that of ordinary processing, but this is the company's own figure.
Business model
The company provides Poseidon to fishing boats free of charge, and the fishers sell the fish processed with it to the company at a premium. The company then wholesales those fish to retailers and restaurants under Seremoni, a consumer brand launched in 2024. As of September 2025, Poseidon was on ten fishing boats.
In March 2026 it bought a processing plant of about 16,000 square feet in Tacoma, Washington. In July of the same year it invested in Cook Inlet, Alaska, and began handling wild sockeye salmon. In partnership with Yamato Holdings, it also delivers fish caught in the United States to the Japanese market.
Funding
- April 2024: raised about 6 million dollars in a seed round, led by Cantos, with 8VC and others participating
- June 2025: raised 22 million dollars in a Series A, led by Founders Fund and Interlagos, with Yamato Holdings (through KURONEKO Innovation Fund II) and others newly joining. Total funding reached about 30 million dollars※3
The investment by Founders Fund was covered in tech media as an unusual bet.
To verify
- The two founders' universities (Khawaja received the University of Pennsylvania's President's Sustainability Prize, but some articles describe both as Penn State graduates)
- Reports that Seremoni sockeye salmon and red snapper went on sale at Whole Foods in September 2026 (headline only; the content could not be confirmed)
References
- Seafood automation start-up Shinkei Systems hooks $22m in Series A funding - AgTechNavigator
- AI-powered humane fishing startup expands with $22M in venture capital - FoodNavigator-USA
- Shinkei Systems will expand its robotic fishing operation thanks to a fresh catch of funding - AgFunderNews
- Shinkei hopes bringing robotics AI to the fishing boat leads to fresher fish and less waste - The Spoon
- "Ikejime": Robot processes fish in a "humane way" and improves taste - heise online
- Shinkei's robots bring ancient Japanese fishing technique to U.S. oceans - Association for Advancing Automation
- Founders Fund's outlier bet on humanely killed fish - TechCrunch
- Shinkei Systems purchases processing plant in Washington to expand supply chain - SeafoodSource
- Shinkei Systems expands Seremoni Grade seafood with Alaska sockeye salmon - Robotics & Automation News
- Yamato invests in Shinkei Systems Corp - Techleap
- Penn Engineering Blog
- Mentioned in
- none
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