Studio ENTRE Inc.

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Company article work in progress. What is being worked on: Basic bios for the five key people in this company, especially Yamaguchi's. For information on how to help, see the guidelines.  More subjects categorized here.

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Studio ENTRE Inc.
General information
Founded	August 7, 2020
Status	Active
Location	2nd Floor, Kuwano Building, 23-4 Jingumae 6-chome, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001
Service	Japan
Type	Business description: Startup studio in the entertainment industry (business development and investment activities) Operating incubation programs in the entertainment industry General activities related to the startup ecosystem in the entertainment industry
Products	Otobe Sapphire
Affiliation	Studio ENTRE NEXT Co., Ltd. GONZO K.K. GEMVOX nana Music Co., Ltd. Yamaha Corporation
Website	https://entre.studio/

Studio ENTRE Inc. (Studio ENTRE 株式会社) is a startup studio aimed at creating new businesses in the entertainment industry. It advertises itself as a community that continues to produce service startups "one after another", similar to how Hollywood movie studios create their works. As an organization that is responsible for the earliest stage of the startup ecosystem, it aims to "develop businesses from 0 to 1 together with individual aspiring entrepreneurs." The organization is responsible for the earliest stages of the startup ecosystem and works with individual entrepreneurial candidates who aspire to startups to develop 0-to-1 businesses.

About

Studio ENTRE Inc. focuses on the areas of creator economy, toC (Theory of constraints) services, media, and content, with the primary goal of creating the entertainment of the future. Studio ENTRE Inc. holds the belief that entertainment will become even more important in the so-called Web3 area, such as the metaverse and NFT technologies, and the company is currently developing a variety of mechanisms. The company has created startup companies based on community activities through the testing of hypotheses within the studio, claiming to be able to open a new startup within six months with an initial funding of 5 million yen (¥5,000,000.00). If a certain level of success is achieved, the studio notes itself as being able to incorporate the project, raise funds from outside investors, and begin full-scale service operation.

On August 5, 2024, a collaboration project between Studio ENTRE Inc. and the Japanese animation studio GONZO K.K., announced the formation of a new A.I. singer label, "GEMVOX". GEMVOX was announced to be a next-generation label that includes A.I. singers, all named after gemstones, developed using the latest voice synthesizer technology aimed with the goal of having new works created daily by various creators and to provide a series of captivating "AI Singers" that inspire creators' imagination, curate the works produced, and encourage collaboration among creators. The project was launched together with Shinichiro Ishikawa, president of GONZO, who continues to pioneer the use of technology in the anime industry, while also taking advantage of the activities of the AI research group "ARS" (AI Resonate Society). This group had months earlier developed, in partnership with Yamaha Corporation, the private VOCALOID β-STUDIO voicebank L for use in an event titled "VX-β作家ソン".

The first announced vocalist of the company was Shimon Topaz, a mysterious girl with a dark appearance who has a beautiful and clear voice and is trilingual, fluent in Japanese, English, and Korean. Her voice provider was stated to be Korean singer/​songwriter Elley (who previously worked as L's voice provider) and at the time, it was not specified which synthesizer Topaz would be developed for. Topaz was also announced to be featured as the main vocalist for the theme song for the upcoming anime PV, "Gloria". On August 21, the president of Studio ENTRE Inc., Norikazu Yamaguchi, followed up on a blog detailing further details of Topaz's development, confirming she would be sold as a bilingual Japanese-English singing voice database for Synthesizer V Studio (which did not support Korean). The technology was not only to be linked to Dreamtonics Co., Ltd., but would also be collaborating with Techno-Speech, Inc. and Yamaha, intent to create AI singers for various platforms and are preparing various projects.

After Topaz, three other AI vocalists, all of them then-unnamed, were being hinted on the GEMVOX homepage, with no mention of any specific synthesizer engines for them. While silhouettes were only shown for two of those vocalists (packed together as a pair over the placeholder name "???"), an image of a masked man was being shown for the remaining vocal (also temporarily labeled as "???"). On October 13, Yamaguchi revealed that the second AI vocal project would be a masculine singer named Shiraki Jasper; although he was announced to be releasing in November, his target engine was left out unspecified. On October 25, in an article covering the release of Topaz's second anime PV "Wafu", Yamaguchi went on record to reveal that the second project was being developed as a Song Voice for VoiSona. After being delayed from his original November release during a live talk at the Tokyo Musical Instruments Expo 2024 (held at the Science Museum on November 3), Jasper, whose voice was provided by Japanese singer/​songwriter Taichiro Mitsunaga, was given by Yamaguchi a December 11 release date.

Meanwhile on October 15, during a news report celebrating the release of Topaz, GEMVOX announced the "AI Singer Voice Provider Audition" (AIシンガー声主オーディション; AI Singer Koenushi Audition), a major collaboration project with nana Music Co., Ltd. for an audition to pick the voice provider for a future AI singer, who was shown in the banner as a dark silhouette identical (save for the gradient coloring) to the left silhouette from the dual-figure placeholder icon from the GEMVOX character homepage. It was held from October 21 to November 24, with the preliminary qualifying round running from October 21 to November 3 and the main event round then running from November 11 to 24. On December 16, utaite Noni was announced as the audition's winner.

On July 28, 2025, in response to a question from a Twitter user, GEMVOX answered that the company had plans to exhibit their newest products (including Topaz's then-upcoming upgrade for Synthesizer V Studio 2, which supports Korean) at various events including the Tokyo Musical Instrument Expo 2025, which would be held in November. After releasing Topaz V2 (a fully trilingual Japanese-English-Korean voice database) on September 17, the company announced on the morning of October 1 that at next midnight, they would air a television commercial for Topaz, with a special announcement to be thrown in as a bonus revealing information about GEMVOX's new upcoming character. On October 2 after 00:00 JST (sometimes written on Japanese TV as October 1 at 24:00), as a "special report" released "ahead of schedule", the third GEMVOX vocalist (after Topaz and Jasper) was revealed to be named Otobe Sapphire, and she would be released on November 6 for VOCALOID6. This release date would be later revised to November 4 after Sapphire's full illustration was revealed on a second TV commercial and on a DTM STATION article featuring not only Sapphire but also her younger sister Otobe Hisui, GEMVOX's fourth vocalist (with release date set for December 15 on VoiSona).

Key people

	Norikazu Yamaguchi (山口哲一). WIP note Twitter (@yamabug)
	Hidenori Nakai (中井秀範). WIP note
	Yasuki Miki (三木靖城). WIP note
	Hiroki Nakamura (中村ひろき). WIP note Twitter (@hiro_9yards)
	maishilo (まいしろ). WIP note Twitter (@_maishilo_)

Voicebanks

VOCALOID6

Otobe Sapphire

External links

• Official website
• Official note
• Official Twitter (@Studio_ENTRE)
• Wantedly