SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son declared he will get off the sidelines and go back on the offensive in tech investing soon, seeking to establish his credentials in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI).
The billionaire is ending years of relative dormancy after his Vision Fund, the world’s largest pool of tech capital, racked up billions of dollars of losses as a Covid-era internet boom withered and a global economic downturn sapped valuations.
The Vision Fund’s return to the field is welcome news for a startup ecosystem whose largest players from Uber Technologies Inc. to Coupang Inc. scaled up thanks to steady financing from the Japanese firm. SoftBank’s signature portfolio firm is now Arm Ltd., the British chip designer Son argues is central to AI. Arm is now on track for one of the largest initial public offerings this year.
Son, 65, said he intends to keep running SoftBank and has found no successor. He grew visibly emotional when talking about his legacy, describing how he cried as he reflected on his future. The billionaire, who made one of the most lucrative bets in startup investing history when he financed Jack Ma and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., said he hadn’t done enough.
“The time has come to shift to offense mode. Since October, I’ve been thinking deeply about the rest of my time as a business person,” Son told shareholders at an annual meeting Wednesday.
He decided “I wanted to become an architect to build the future of humankind. I may not achieve everything — I myself as an individual may not be enough — but I want to play a role, to an extent, somehow.”
Prior to this week, the billionaire largely stayed away from the public eye. He stepped away from conducting SoftBank’s earnings calls, even as the Vision Fund unit shouldered billions of dollars in losses over five straight quarters. New investments have ground to a virtual halt, as Son said he would focus on Arm.
Thanks to its long hibernation, SoftBank now has enough cash on hand to invest again, Son said. Arm is at the beginning of an “explosive” period of growth, he said, adding that he’s spent the last few years doubling the number of the unit’s engineers.
SoftBank’s shares, which rose as much as 4.1 percent before the meeting began, pared some of their gains after Son’s comments. Still, the stock has gained more than 30 percent in the June quarter, heading for its best quarterly performance in three years.
An early champion of investing in artificial intelligence, Son the previous day told shareholders at Japanese telecom unit SoftBank Corp. how happy he was about growing public awareness about AI’s potential. SoftBank has poured billions of dollars into hundreds of companies and now sees some of those bets bearing fruit soon, Son said.
Prospects for Arm’s initial public offering have brightened recently, buoyed by hype around generative AI and talks with potential anchor investors including Intel Corp. Arm is seeking to raise as much as $10 billion, Bloomberg News reported, and brokerages are revising up their SoftBank stock price targets.
“We will go on the counter-offensive soon,” he said. “When your grandkids grow up to be our age, I believe that they will be living in such a reality where the computer is 10,000 times smarter than the sum of all human wisdom.”
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