SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is increasing the company’s focus on AI through a series of major investments and acquisitions.

The Japanese conglomerate, which owns a majority stake in UK-based chip designer Arm, has also announced plans to acquire US chipmaker Ampere Computing for US$6.5 billion and has announced multi-billion dollar planned investments in US-based OpenAI.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund, launched in 2017, shifted its portfolio toward AI companies after previous investments in ride-hailing companies and WeWork led to significant losses

SoftBank previously entered the robotics market with its investment in French company Aldebaran and the launch of the Pepper robot, but stopped producing Pepper in 2020 after disappointing results.

Despite setbacks, SoftBank continues to pursue an AI-driven strategy amid rapid global competition in the sector.

🔗 Source: CNBC

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ SoftBank’s fund size fundamentally reshaped venture capital dynamics

The Vision Fund’s $100 billion war chest was nearly double the entire U.S. venture capital industry’s annual fundraising when it launched, dwarfing the $53.9 billion raised across all U.S. VCs in 20181.

This massive scale allowed SoftBank to write checks ranging from $100 million to $1 billion per deal, forcing traditional venture capitalists to either dramatically increase their investment sizes or withdraw from competitive deals entirely1.

The fund’s strategy of investing nearly $40 billion across 82 companies, including 14 that made CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, demonstrated how concentrated capital deployment could accelerate startup growth at unprecedented speed1.

This approach effectively created a new category of “mega-round” investing that became standard practice, as competitors scrambled to match SoftBank’s check sizes to remain competitive in high-growth deals.

2️⃣ Market timing remains the critical challenge even for well-capitalized investors

SoftBank’s experience illustrates how even massive capital reserves cannot overcome poor market timing in venture investing.

The company had deployed most of its Vision Fund capital on companies like Uber and WeWork by 2021-2022, just as the AI revolution was beginning to accelerate with firms like OpenAI gaining momentum[article].

This timing mismatch meant SoftBank missed the initial wave of generative AI investments despite Son’s decade-long interest in AI applications, from his 2010 vision of “brain computers” to early robotics investments like the Pepper robot[article].

Recent SoftBank developments