On June 20, 2025, the second LF AI & Data Japan Regional User Group (RUG) Meetup was held at Fujitsu Yokohama Hub. The event concluded a week of community gatherings surrounding the first-ever KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan, bringing together a wide range of engineers, researchers, and business professionals.
Mark Collier on AI × OSS Trends, and Japan’s Contributions in Practice and Vision
Mark Collier, newly appointed General Manager of AI & Infrastructure at LF AI & Data, made his first appearance at a community event in Japan as part of the Linux Foundation and OpenInfra Foundation leadership.
In addition to insights shared by global leaders from LF AI & Data, the Meetup featured presentations by key members from Japan RUG, including speakers from Hitachi and Fujitsu. The sessions covered both hands-on experiences with open source AI projects and technical perspectives on ongoing research and OSS contributions, offering valuable takeaways for practitioners and stakeholders alike.
Session Highlights
LF AI and Data Update [View slides]
Todd Moore – SVP of Program Operations, The Linux Foundation
Beyond Training: Applications in the AI-Native Era [View slides]
Mark Collier – GM of AI and Infrastructure, The Linux Foundation
Collier highlighted how the center of gravity in AI is shifting from training to inference, with the next wave being driven by autonomous agents that orchestrate thousands of chained calls to LLMs per task.
He outlined three core open source pillars that support this evolution:
Training: PyTorch
Inference: ONNX Runtime, LLM-d, KServe
Agents: MCP, A2A protocols
These components form an “AI-native” stack running on Linux, Kubernetes, and OpenStack, spanning from edge devices to hyperscale clusters.
Project Insights from LF AI & Data [View slides]
Satoshi Ito – Research & Development Group, Hitachi, Ltd.
Ito-san shared a practical overview of selected LF AI & Data projects, offering insights gained from trial usage and discussing their potential in enterprise settings.
Open Source for Multi-Agent AI in Industry [View slides]
Kosaku Kimura – Senior Research Manager, Fujitsu Research, AI Laboratory, AI Innovation Platform CPJ
Kimura-san introduced Fujitsu’s research and development efforts toward enabling collaboration among multiple AI agents in industrial domains such as supply chain management. He also discussed plans for contributing to existing OSS projects and open-sourcing new technologies under development.
The Meetup concluded on a high note with closing comments from Noriaki Fukuyasu, VP of Linux Foundation Japan, wrapping up a lively and content-rich session.
Session Recording
Full session recordings are available on the LF AI & Data YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date on community presentations and insights. You can view event recording on LF AI & Data YouTube channel here.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Japan RUG
Japan RUG is a growing regional community where AI engineers and researchers in Japan come together to collaborate and innovate through open source. The group will continue hosting regular Meetups and workshops aimed at strengthening the local AI community and accelerating OSS adoption and development.
Stay informed about upcoming events and news by following the official website and social media:
