A Radical Questioner at the Edge of Space, Finance, and Philosophy
During his doctoral studies at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (now Institute of Science Tokyo), he specialized in theoretical astrophysics and planetary formation. As part of a Japanese government–funded research project, he conducted exoplanet and planetary exploration research using the Subaru Telescope in Hawai‘i. Working across physics, astronomy, life sciences, and computational science, his research centered on a fundamental human question:
“Where do we come from?” —approached through both theory and data, at a civilizational scale.
He later left academia to enter environments where decisions shape reality. At Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division, he worked on IPOs, capital raising, and M&A, operating in contexts where decisions involving hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars are made. There, he came to understand—viscerally—that outcomes are often determined not by logic alone, but by how questions themselves are framed.
He then joined ispace, a space startup that went public in 2023, serving as Chief Mission Officer and leading Japan’s first private lunar mission. From mission design and public–private partnerships to fundraising exceeding $100 million, business development, and organizational architecture, he worked across the full system. In a world where uncertainty is the default, he confronted daily questions such as:
“What do we trust? “ “Where do we place our bets?”
Not as theory. Not as imagination. But as decisions that would shape the future.
Today, he is Founder & Co-CEO of wov (Kamakura) and Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Philosophy Technologies (Silicon Valley), building ventures that translate philosophical thinking into real-world practice. He also serves as Philosophy Advisor at Zahren Capital (New York) and as a mentor for Plug and Play Japan and JETRO’s J-StarX global expansion program, working closely with founders and executives seeking to change the world.
Daishi’s navigation does not begin by organizing thinking within familiar frameworks. It begins by asking whether those frameworks are valid at all. Having moved between research labs contemplating the origin of the universe, the front lines of capital markets, and the creation of entirely new industries, he explores questions that raise spatial scale, temporal scale, and underlying assumptions—together with leaders. This enables executives to re-locate their decisions within historical, civilizational, and even cosmic perspectives, and to reconsider not only what they decide, but where they stand and where they are heading.