PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — NEC X, the Silicon Valley venture studio backed by NEC Corporation’s advanced technologies and global businesses, today announced that Metabob, an AI-powered code intelligence company from NEC X’s Elev X! Ignite, has been successfully implemented across select NEC internal operations. The solution enables development teams to build more reliable software with greater speed.
Validation trials prior to deployment showed Metabob reduced NEC’s software maintenance and in-development remediation times by 66% compared to manual processes and by 50% versus other AI-assisted workflows.
The incorporation of Metabob across NEC’s development environment leverages graph-based code intelligence that models code dependencies and execution flows as graphs. This helps development teams better understand complex codebases, detect logical issues earlier and reduce downstream errors. By continuously learning from code structures, development history and past issues, including human-reviewed fixes and validated code changes, Metabob improves accuracy and reliability over time.
In addition to marking a milestone for Metabob, the adoption and update exemplify NEC X’s mission to accelerate startup growth through access to NEC’s R&D capabilities, business environments and operations across over 50 international markets.
“Seeing Metabob’s technology adopted inside NEC is exactly the outcome NEC X was designed to enable,” said Shintaro Matsumoto, CEO of NEC X. “By combining deep code intelligence with generative AI, grounded in system-level code understanding rather than surface-level pattern matching, Metabob is helping set a new standard for how large organizations can responsibly deploy AI in software engineering.”
Metabob was founded in 2020, emerging from the alignment between an NEC researcher’s hypothesis on applying AI to code review and the founder’s real-world challenges in software development, and originally gained recognition for its AI-driven code review and debugging capabilities. Today, the company has evolved into a comprehensive AI code intelligence platform that combines Graph Neural Network–based static analysis of code structure and execution flow with generative AI to detect complex logical issues, predict downstream impacts of code changes and guide AI agents with a shared, system-level understanding of the codebase.
“Enterprises don’t just need AI that can generate code, they need AI that can apply changes to complex systems while maintaining accuracy and reliability,” said Massimiliano Genta, CEO and Founder of Metabob. “Through the NEC X program, we received not only technical and financial support, but also direct exposure to enterprise customers and investors, including NEC. By working closely with real-world development environments and use cases, and continuously validating our technology, we refined our product to meet the quality and requirements truly demanded in enterprise settings. Those efforts have translated into real value being recognized in production environments as large-scale and sophisticated as NEC’s. Through our collaboration with NEC, we have clearly demonstrated how AI can be safely and effectively applied to large-scale software development.”
Based on these results, NEC plans to incorporate Metabob more frequently into its workflows to reduce in-development rework and issues identified during post-development static analysis.
Tokuaki Seki, Executive Professional, Corporate IT Systems Division at NEC Corporation, commented on the impact of Metabob within NEC:
“As we work to improve productivity through AI, the prolonged development cycles caused by knowledge silos and the challenge of maintaining application quality have remained long-standing issues.
By adopting Metabob, AI streamlines and enhances complex code reviews, enabling our teams to focus more on creative and mission-critical development work. In addition, through our collaboration with NEC X, we expect to share the insights gained internally across the entire group, creating a positive cycle that accelerates innovation.
Metabob serves as a powerful driver for advancing NEC’s internal digital transformation. We will continue to actively adopt cutting-edge technologies and leverage the outcomes to deliver digital transformation value to our customers and society.”
NEC X’s Elev X! programs provide startups with funding, mentorship, access to NEC’s extensive patent portfolio and opportunities for real-world deployment across NEC’s global business units. Metabob’s implementation at NEC highlights how this model enables startups to evolve their technology through direct enterprise collaboration while delivering measurable business impact.
About Metabob
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Metabob helps organizations reduce code maintenance time, mitigate technical debt and ship reliable software faster. By combining graph-based static code analysis with generative AI, Metabob enables teams to understand, validate and improve both human- and AI-generated code across complex systems.
For more information, visit https://metabob.com
About NEC X
NEC X is an innovation powerhouse and curator of disruptive startups backed by the global technology leadership of NEC. Leveraging more than 125 years of IT and network technologies expertise, NEC X transforms visionary ideas into commercial successes through its Silicon Valley–based Elev X! Ignite and Elev X! Boost programs. Since 2018, NEC X has helped launch and grow more than 180 startups.
For more information, visit https://nec-x.com and https://www.elev-x.com
About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.” NEC supports businesses and communities by delivering solutions that advance safety, security, fairness and efficiency, contributing to a more sustainable society.
For more information, visit https://www.nec.com
Media Contact:
Robert Brownlie
Bob Gold & Associates
310-320-2010
necx@bobgoldpr.com
