Rakuten Group, Inc.

Who owns Rakuten Group, Inc.?
Rakuten is a public company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under ticker 4755. Founder Hiroshi Mikitani is the largest individual shareholder and serves as chairman, president, and CEO. Other major holders include institutional investors, Japan Post Holdings, and a Tencent-affiliated investor.

Is Rakuten publicly traded?
Yes. Rakuten Group trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under ticker 4755. It listed on JASDAQ in 2000 and moved to the Tokyo Stock Exchange's First Section in 2013.

When was Rakuten founded?
Hiroshi Mikitani founded Rakuten in February 1997 in Tokyo, launching the Rakuten Ichiba online marketplace in May 1997.

What does Rakuten own?
Rakuten owns more than 70 services including Rakuten Ichiba, Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Card, Rakuten Bank, Rakuten Securities, Rakuten Travel, Viber, Kobo, Viki, Rakuten TV, and Rakuten Rewards.

How much revenue does Rakuten make?
Rakuten reported consolidated revenue of approximately 2.50 trillion yen for fiscal 2025, up 9.5 percent, with record non-GAAP operating income of 106.3 billion yen. The group still posted an IFRS net loss due to mobile-related costs.

Does Rakuten own Viber?
Yes. Rakuten acquired Viber in February 2014 for approximately $900 million. Viber operates as a wholly owned subsidiary under Viber Media S.a r.l. within Rakuten's International Business Unit.

Hiroshi Mikitani founded the company in February 1997 after leaving investment banking, launching the Rakuten Ichiba online shopping mall in May of that year. The original model was a virtual mall: merchants paid monthly fees to open storefronts rather than Rakuten holding inventory, a structure that let the marketplace scale with thin capital requirements.

Rakuten listed on the JASDAQ exchange in 2000 and used the next decade to expand beyond e-commerce. It acquired travel portal Rakuten Travel, moved into online securities with the 2003 purchase that became Rakuten Securities, launched Rakuten Card in 2005, and bought a baseball franchise, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, in 2004. Rakuten Bank followed in 2010 through the acquisition of eBank.

The company went aggressively international in the 2010s. It acquired US e-commerce site Buy.com in 2010, Canadian e-reader maker Kobo in January 2012 for approximately $315 million, streaming service Viki in 2013, messaging app Viber in February 2014 for approximately $900 million, and US cashback service Ebates in 2014 for about $1 billion, renaming it Rakuten Rewards. Not all bets worked: Buy.com's US marketplace was shut down, and European properties including PriceMinister and Play.com were eventually divested.

The boldest move came in 2019, when Rakuten announced it would build Japan's fourth mobile carrier network. Rakuten Mobile launched commercial service in April 2020 using a fully virtualized, cloud-native network architecture it promoted as an industry first. Building the network consumed enormous capital: the Mobile segment ran operating losses in the hundreds of billions of yen annually from 2020 through 2023, dragging the group to its first consolidated losses in decades.

To fund the buildout, Rakuten raised capital from strategic partners including Japan Post and a Tencent-linked investor in 2021, issued bonds, and partially listed subsidiaries, taking Rakuten Bank public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in April 2023. Mobile subscriber growth and cost reduction steadily narrowed the losses, and by fiscal 2025 the group returned to record non-GAAP operating income of 106.3 billion yen.

In the mid-2020s Mikitani repositioned the group around artificial intelligence under an "AI-nization" strategy, embedding agentic AI tools across the Ichiba marketplace, travel, and fintech services while continuing to expand the Viber, Kobo, and Viki international businesses.

Rakuten Mobile's capital-intensive launch drew years of skepticism. Critics questioned whether a fourth entrant could compete against entrenched carriers, and the group's repeated bond issuance and equity raises between 2020 and 2023 sparked dilution concerns among shareholders. The losses proved temporary as subscriber growth and cost cuts narrowed the gap.

Rakuten has also faced scrutiny over marketplace practices. Japanese regulators and merchants have periodically challenged the fairness of terms imposed on Ichiba sellers, including a 2020 controversy over mandatory free-shipping thresholds that the Japan Fair Trade Commission investigated before Rakuten revised the policy.

Viber and other international services have faced periodic government blocks and content disputes in markets including Iran and Myanmar, common to all global messaging platforms.