Rakuten and HP Launch Rakuten AI for Desktop on HP PCs, Bringing Hybrid AI to HP Customers in Japan

• Rakuten Group and HP announce the availability of Rakuten AI for Desktop, exclusively bundled with eligible HP PCs in Japan^*1.
• Rakuten AI for Desktop combines on-device and cloud AI, giving customers access to Rakuten's Japanese-optimized LLMs for both private on-device intelligence and seamless online connectivity to the Rakuten Ecosystem.
• Whether online, offline or traveling, customers can access AI wherever they are. On-device mode enables intelligent, private and personalized workflows, while HP Wolf Security helps provide a secure foundation for AI workloads.

Tokyo, July 29, 2026 - Rakuten Group, Inc. and HP Inc. today announced the launch of Rakuten AI for Desktop on eligible HP PCs in Japan, bringing new levels of local performance, cost efficiency, offline availability and privacy to customers alongside the Rakuten AI experience.

Rakuten AI for Desktop has been optimized for HP AI PCs and allows, for the first time, the company's efficient Japanese-optimized Rakuten AI 7B large language model (LLM) to be used locally — even when offline — using the HP device's own built-in AI computing power with on-device mode, as well as in conventional cloud mode.

As AI usage increases, individuals and organizations globally are looking for ways to unlock its benefits without incurring unnecessary costs or privacy trade-offs. HP and Rakuten see hybrid AI playing an increasingly important role because it leverages the strengths of AI PCs to provide a choice to run AI workloads locally or in the cloud.

HP Japan customers can use Rakuten AI for Desktop on-device mode for intelligent, private and personalized workflows. Cloud mode connects users to Rakuten's specialized agents and the Rakuten Ecosystem. By reducing reliance on cloud services, customers gain seamless continuity offline with responsiveness, cost and privacy benefits.

“Talking with AI is fast becoming something people can't live without. Our vision is to make intelligence available wherever you are — online or offline, on a plane or in an emergency — so you have peace of mind that intelligence is always with you,” said Ting Cai, Chief AI & Data Officer, Rakuten Group. “Our development team has overcome significant technical challenges to reach this milestone, integrating the application, the model and the underlying hardware to bring our customers the latest technology with the robustness they expect. With Rakuten AI running locally on your device, we can leverage local context to get more done for you.”

“As AI becomes a natural part of everyday work and life, customers want experiences that are intelligent, secure and seamlessly integrated into the devices they use every day,” said Nobuki Okado, Managing Director, HP Japan. “Together with Rakuten, we're bringing hybrid AI to customers in Japan through an experience designed to help people work, create and collaborate more confidently. This collaboration demonstrates how AI PCs will become the foundation for the future of work by intelligently combining on-device and cloud AI.”

Today's announcement builds on the two companies' strategic collaboration announced in November 2025^*2. By combining their strengths — HP's leading PC brand and innovative hardware and Rakuten's unique AI and ecosystem offerings — they intend to empower customers' daily life with AI-integrated devices and solutions.

With the launch of Rakuten AI for Desktop, HP PC users gain access to Rakuten AI's agentic capabilities^*3. In addition to skills for daily tasks, it offers specialized Rakuten agents that can help complete everyday tasks like shopping, booking travel and managing Rakuten Points. Rakuten AI for Desktop acts as a gateway to over 70 Rakuten Ecosystem services and enhances daily life in Japan with language and cultural optimization.

Unlike traditional software pre-installation, Rakuten AI for Desktop is currently provided as an exclusive bundled offering with eligible HP PCs in Japan, enabling customers to activate the application after purchase and immediately begin using its AI capabilities. The bundled offering is currently exclusive to HP customers in Japan.

Availability
The Rakuten AI for Desktop offering is available beginning July 29, 2026, with eligible HP PCs for enterprise customers in Japan, with consumer availability to follow in October 2026.

Fact Sheet

Key Features of Rakuten AI for Desktop
Rakuten AI for Desktop users can switch between on-device and cloud-based services, ensuring high performance, data privacy, availability and cost-efficiency. For the first time, Rakuten AI is available with the on-device integration of Rakuten AI 7B ONNX, a special version of the Rakuten AI 7B large language model (LLM) optimized for HP PCs.

On-device Mode: Powered by Rakuten's efficient, Japanese-optimized LLM optimized for PCs, this mode offers users private, low latency AI on-device. HP Japan customers can use AI for rewriting, summarizing and translation with privacy and freedom from connectivity or cloud constraints.

Cloud Mode: Connects users to Rakuten's full suite of specialized agents and the Rakuten Ecosystem. This mode enables complex, real-time guidance from intent to action within a single interface for shopping, travel planning and booking, or navigating mobile subscriptions. 

Streamlined Workflow Tools
Rakuten AI for Desktop integrates directly into the user's workspace to eliminate copy-pasting and reduce switching between browser tabs or multiple windows, offering a more frictionless desktop experience:

• AI Chat Window: A central hub for interacting with Rakuten Ecosystem Agents, which manage queries across Rakuten Ichiba, Rakuten Travel, Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Music, Rakuten Point Club and more.
• Floating Icon and System Tray: A handy drag-and-drop tool that can be snapped to any part of the screen or the system tray, providing immediate access to AI assistance.
• Contextual Action Bar: Provides automatic suggestions and an inline menu for quick execution of common tasks, including summarization, translation and text rewriting.

How to use Rakuten AI for Desktop

1. Click the Rakuten AI icon on the taskbar or Start menu to open the Rakuten AI for Desktop website.
2. Follow the website prompts to download the application.
3. Start application. Use cloud mode and on-device toggle to verify if the device supports on-device mode.
4. If verified, users can install on-device mode in the settings page for use.

For more information see the Rakuten AI for Desktop official site: https://ai.rakuten.co.jp/offers/hp

What's Available: On-device and Cloud Mode

What's Available: Cloud Mode Only

About Rakuten AI for Desktop
Developed by Rakuten and designed for AI PCs, Rakuten AI for Desktop is powered by Rakuten's efficient, Japanese-optimized large language models (LLMs) integrated directly into devices. Its on-device mode offers privacy by running sensitive AI tasks directly on local devices, significantly reducing cloud dependency and associated costs. With cloud mode, Rakuten AI provides specialized agents and seamless access to the Rakuten Ecosystem, enhancing productivity and daily life for users.

About Rakuten AI 7B
Rakuten AI 7B is a 7 billion parameter Japanese language foundation model developed by continually training Mistral-7B-v0.1^*4, an open LLM from France-based AI startup Mistral AI. Training of the model was carried out on an in-house multi-node GPU cluster engineered by Rakuten to enable the rapid and scalable training of models on large, complex datasets. For HP PCs, Rakuten has developed a special version that is continually trained, fine-tuned and quantized from the base Rakuten AI 7B model.

Characteristics of the LLM

1. High performance through training on high-quality data

The models have been continually trained from the Mistral-7B-v0.1 model on English and Japanese internet-scale datasets. These datasets have been carefully curated and cleaned through an in-house multi-stage data filtering and annotation process to ensure the quality, contributing to the high performance of the models.

2. High efficiency through extended tokenizer

The models also use an extended tokenizer^*5 optimized for Japanese language characters. In the extended tokenizer, a single token now represents more characters than before, enabling cost-efficient text processing during model training as well as inference.

Notes

1. Eligible PC models in Japan are HP Windows PCs except gaming PCs, ThinClient and some Workstation models.
2. Press release: Rakuten and HP Japan to Bring Rakuten AI to HP PCs: https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2025/1111_01.html
3. Accessible capabilities vary by online and offline modes.
4. The Mistral model can be accessed from https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1
5. A tokenizer is a program that breaks down text into smaller units called tokens. Tokens are typically words, sub-words, or characters, depending on the level of granularity desired.

About HP
HP Inc. (NYSE:HPQ) is a global technology leader redefining the Future of Work. Operating in more than 180 countries, HP delivers innovative and AI-powered devices, software, services and subscriptions that drive business growth and professional fulfillment. For more information, please visit: HP.com.

About Rakuten
Rakuten Group, Inc. (TSE: 4755) is a global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Founded in Tokyo in 1997 as an online marketplace, Rakuten has expanded to offer services in e-commerce, fintech, digital content and communications to 2.1 billion members around the world. The Rakuten Group has around 30,000 employees, and operations in 30 countries and regions. For more information visit https://global.rakuten.com/corp/.