The spread of generative AI is reshaping the content and entertainment industries. This two-part feature introduces 20 leading stocks in games, live entertainment and advertising, along with related solution providers.
Against the backdrop of expanding investment in generative AI, its impact is spreading beyond semiconductors and data centers to content industries including games, live entertainment, VTubers, video and advertising. IDC Japan forecasts that Japan’s generative AI market will expand from approximately ¥474.5 billion in 2025 to approximately ¥3.2739 trillion in 2029. In digital advertising, 25.8% are reported to use general-purpose AI tools, 14.3% advanced external AI services, and 12.8% in-house-developed AI.
In entertainment, AI is being used across a broad range of applications, including not only the automatic generation of creative works themselves, but also NPC creation and translation for games, debugging, operational analysis, advertising materials, live-event captioning, multilingual streaming and fan CRM, as well as AI-generated copy, images and video. In 2026, CyberAgent was reported to be providing advertising support in line with the start of domestic availability of ChatGPT advertising, while Nippon Television was reported to be using AI Co-Creator to support processes ranging from script analysis to storyboards and video previsualization.
The first half of this article introduces 20 companies across 4 categories covering games, live entertainment, advertising, video and streaming, while the second half profiles 10 related companies supplying middleware, voice, translation and AI engines. In the games sector, Capcom is accelerating its global expansion by improving the efficiency of production, translation, quality assurance and marketing through AI. Revenue for the fiscal year ending March 2026 was ¥195.365 billion and operating profit was ¥75.295 billion, with revenue and operating profit also rising in Q1 2027. Square Enix Holdings has been pursuing AI applications from an early stage. For the fiscal year ending March 2026, consolidated revenue was approximately ¥297.6 billion, including approximately ¥172.8 billion from Digital Entertainment, while Q1 2027 saw a substantial increase in revenue to ¥78.423 billion and operating profit to ¥17.008 billion.