Augmented reality entrepreneur is worth $700 million; and he says it’s ridiculous

When he graduated from university in Japan, Tomohiro Ohno didn’t know what he wanted to do. But he knew what he didn’t want to do, which was work for a traditional Japanese company.

So he ended up founding a firm that’s more space age than staid: Ohno was an early mover into augmented reality. The company he started, Kudan Inc., is developing programs that enable computers to have the equivalent of human eyes, using what Ohno and his industry call computer vision algorithms.

Kudan listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December. It was a sparkling debut. The stock shot up more than sixfold to a high at the end of February, which saw his fortune top $800 million. While it has since given up some of those gains, the market value is still about $1.3 billion, and Ohno owns more than half the shares. He’s currently estimated to have a net worth of about $700 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Still, the 49-year-old entrepreneur is far from getting carried away.