Why would a crowdfunded ai project need to be in Japan particularly ?

But regardless, part of the answer might be that it might be more attractive for "capable people" to get serious money working for a for-profit AI company at the moment.

That's probably an indirect reference to being able to train on copyrighted material in Japan [0].

[0] https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/japan-ai-data-laws-exp...

sakana