Open Co., Ltd., a Tokyo automation services company owned by Open Group, has taken over the BizteX cobit business from BizteX Inc., the venture-backed Tokyo startup that created it. Both companies announced the transfer on November 2, 2026. It took effect on October 30.
The deal is a business transfer, not a purchase of BizteX itself. Neither side disclosed a price. From October 30, cobit is provided by Open, while BizteX will continue to run its other products, the BizteX Connect integration platform and the BizteX robop desktop automation tool.
BizteX told customers that their contracts pass to Open automatically under Article 20(2) of the cobit terms of use, so in principle they do not need to do anything. Login addresses, IDs, passwords and robots already built stay the same. BizteX will take questions about the transfer until December 31, 2026, after which contracts and support move to Open.
What BizteX built
BizteX was founded in July 2015 by Mitsutoshi Shimada, who remains its chief executive. It released cobit in November 2017 and calls it the first cloud RPA product in Japan; it has registered 'cloud RPA' as a trademark.
Robotic process automation, or RPA, uses software robots to repeat routine tasks that people do on a computer. Most early RPA tools had to be installed on PCs or servers. Cobit instead runs in a web browser and automates work such as gathering information, entering and copying data, and registering details on web services. Users build and run robots through a visual interface.
BizteX's company history says users had created more than 10,000 robots on cobit by July 2019. The product won a Good Design Award in 2018, and BizteX was named to the Japanese government's J-Startup support programme the same year. The company later broadened into integration software, launching BizteX Connect in 2020 and the robop desktop tool in 2022.
The funding
BizteX lists four rounds on its website. It raised ¥40 million (about $360,000) in a June 2017 seed round from Genesia Ventures and ¥400 million (about $3.6 million) in an August 2018 Series A from WiL. In October 2018 it took ¥20 million (about $180,000) from GLOBIS Alumni Growth Investment, the fund's first investment.
In April 2020 it announced a total of ¥630 million (about $5.8 million) from investors including Miyako Capital, KDDI and IT services company TIS. THE BRIDGE reported at the time that the total included loans from Japan Finance Corporation and Shoko Chukin Bank. Dollar figures here are approximate conversions at rates of the time.
Why Open is buying
Open was founded in July 2013 and is based in Nishi-Shimbashi, Tokyo. Its business covers information processing services built on software robots using RPA and AI, along with consulting, outsourcing and digital marketing. It has capital of ¥30 million and is a subsidiary of Open Group.
In its announcement Open said companies now want more than the automation of single routine jobs. They want AI decisions written back into existing systems automatically and work automated across several SaaS and core business systems. Open also said the growing number of automation tools has left some companies unsure which one fits, or running several at once, and described the cobit deal as part of a reorganisation of the automation market that it expects.
Open plans to combine cobit with generative AI, AI agents and its own solutions, including AUTORO. In the model it described, generative AI reads documents and data and makes judgements, while RPA carries out the final step of entering or updating data in business systems.
An argument about AI costs
Open's release made a cost argument for keeping RPA alongside AI agents. It noted that although prices for AI model APIs are falling, agents that work through several steps can consume thousands to tens of thousands of tokens per task, so total costs rise as use grows.
Letting RPA handle the repeatable 'last mile' of a process, Open argued, keeps the tokens spent on AI reasoning to a minimum while still building AI into business workflows. It said it intends to support customers from the first question of which work to automate through to design, build and operation.
