Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab as well as an MIT Professor. He is chairman of the board of PureTech Health and a board member of Sony Corp., the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The New York Times Co. He is the co-founder and a board member of Digital Garage, an Internet company in Japan. He has created numerous Internet companies, including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. He was an early-stage investor in Formlabs, Flickr, Kickstarter, littleBits, Path, Twitter, Wikia and other companies.
In 2008, Ito was named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web. In 2011 Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers. Also in 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute in recognition of his role as one of the world's leading advocates of Internet freedom. In 2011 and 2012, Nikkei Business selected him as one of the 100 most influential people for the future of Japan.
In 2013, Ito was awarded a Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, from The New School. In 2014, he was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Festival Hall of Fame and was awarded the Golden Plate Award by the Academy of Achievement. In 2015, Ito was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Tufts University.
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