The Softbank founder son is his largest guess by placing the longer term on AI

Softbanks big AI games

AI seems to be personal for son.

“Softbank was founded for what purpose? What purpose was Masa born for? It may sound strange, but I think I was born to realize Asi,” said Son last year.

This may give a way to explain what has been an aggressive drive in recent years -especially in the last two -to put soft bank at the center of AI history.

In 2016, Softbank Chip Designer Arm acquired Arm in a deal worth around 32 billion US dollars at that time. Today, arm Has a value of more than 145 billion US dollars. While ARM blueptions form the basis of the designs for almost all smartphones in the world, the company nowadays would like to position itself as a key player in the AI infrastructure. Arm-based chips are part of Nvidia 'S systems that go in data centers.

In March, Softbank also announced plans to acquire another chip designer, amper computing, for $ 6.5 billion.

Chatgpt Maker Openaai is another fixed -tent investment for soft bank. The Japanese giant recently says that planned investments in the company will achieve around 4.8 trillion Japanese yen (32.7 billion US dollars).

Softbank has also invested in a number of other companies that are invested in their portfolio in connection with AI in connection with AI with the AI.

“The Softbank AI strategy is comprehensive and extends over the entire AI stack of basic semiconductors, software, infrastructure and robotics to state-of-the-art cloud services and end applications to critical industries such as Enterprise, Education, Health and Autonomous Systems”.

“The vision of Mr. Son is to combine these components coherently and integrate deeply and thus set a powerful AI ecosystem that should maximize the long-term value for our shareholders.”

Stock Diagram -iconstock -Igram -Symbol

Softbank's stock performance since 2017, the year in which the first vision fund was founded.

There is a common topic behind soft bank investments in AI companies that come directly from the son – namely that these companies should use advanced intelligence to be more competitive and successful in making their product better and their customers happy, said a person familiar with the company CNBC. They could only comment anonymously due to the sensitivity of the matter.

It started with and brain computers and robots

When Softbank 2010 launched “Softbanks next 30-year vision”, Son spoke during a presentation about “brain computer”. He described these computers as systems that could at some point learn and program themselves.

And then there were robots. Main technology images such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla Chef Elon Musk now talks about robotics as an important application of AI – but son thought More than a decade ago.

In 2012, Softbank took over a majority stake in a French company called Aldebaran. Two years later, the two companies started a humanoid robot called Pepper, which she described as “the first personal robot in the world that can read emotions”.

Later Son said: “In 30 years I hope that robots will be one of the core business to make profits for the Softbank group.”

The bet from Softbank on Pepper was ultimately canceled for the company. Softbank lowered jobs in its robotic unit and set up in 2020 to produce pepper. In 2022, the German United Robotics Group agreed to acquire Aldebaran from Softbank.

But the son's very early interest in robots underlined his curiosity for AI applications of the future.

“He was very early and has long thought about it,” said Sama, the author of “The Money Trap”.

Son cooked something bigger in the background: a Tech fund that would make waves in the investment world. He founded the Vision Fund in 2017 with a massive capital of $ 100 billion.

Softbank aggressively invested in companies around the world with some of the biggest bets on Ride hail players like Above and Chinese company Didi.

Investments in Chinese technology companies and some bad bets on companies such as Wework have collected the mood for the Vision Fund by 2023 billion of losses of billions of US dollars.

Vision, but bad timing

The market questioned some of the investments of son in companies such as Uber and Didi, which at that time burned cash and unclear economy of the units.

But even these investments spoke according to the former partner of the Softbank Vision Fund with the AI perspective on son.

“His thought at that time was the first arise from AI that would be self -driving cars,” the source told CNBC.

This could also be considered as early as a case. Uber has created a driverless car unit just to sell it. Instead, the company has focused on other self-driving automotive companies to bring them to the Uber platform. Even now, driverless cars are not widespread on streets, although commercial services such as those of Waymo are available.

Softbank still has investments in driverless car companies such as British Startup Wayve.

The timing was clearly not on the son's side. After the record losses in the Vision Fund in 2022, Son Softbank declared “defense mode”, which would significantly reduce the investments and be more prudent. At that time, companies such as Openaai began to win steam, but still before the start of Chatgpt that the company brought to the card.

“When these companies came about in 2021, 2022, Masa had been in a perfect place, but he had used all of his ammunition for other companies,” said the former Vision Fund Exec.

“When they came to age in 21 or 22 years, the Vision Fund invested in five or six hundred different companies, and he was unable to invest in AI, and he missed that.”

Son himself said this year that Softbank wanted to invest in Openaai in 2019, but it was it Microsoft That became a key investor. The fast striker until 2025 has the vision find, of which there are now two – a portfolio with AI -focused companies.

But this time was difficult for investors across the board. The Covid 19 pandemic, the booming inflation and the rising interest rates came to the entire board after years of loose monetary policy and a tech bull run.

Softbank did not see this time as a missed opportunity to invest in AI, said a person familiar with the company.

Instead, the company believes that it is still very early in the AI investment cycle, added the source.

Risk and reward

AI technology moves quickly, from the chips that lead the software over the models, underpin the popular applications.

Tech giants in the USA and China are fighting to restore again and again to produce AI models with the aim of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI)-a term with different definitions, depending on who they speak, but generally refers to AI, which is smarter than humans. With billions of dollars investments in technology, the risk is high and the rewards could be even higher.

But disorders can come out of nowhere.

This year the Chinese company Deepseek was beating after publishing a so-called argumentation model that seemed to have seemed to have been developed more cheaper than its US rivals. The fact that a Chinese company has managed the feat, rocked the global financial markets, which bet on the USA, despite all the export restrictions for Advanced Tech, an inadequate AI lead.

While the markets have recovered since then, the potential for surprise advances in technology remains a great risk of people like soft bank in such an early stage in the AI.

“As with most technology investments, the most important challenge is to invest in the profit technologies. Many of the investments made of soft bank are in the current executives, but the AI is still in the relative in its infancy, so that other challengers could still arise from nothing,” said Dan Baker, Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar.

Nevertheless, son has made it clear that he would like to set up soft bank with DNA that they see and survive and thrive For 300 years according to the company's website.

This may be a way to explain the great risks that the son takes, and his conviction when it comes to certain topics and companies – and the evaluations he is willing to pay.

“He (son) made some mistakes, but it is directly in the same triangle, that is, he wants to be sure that he is a real player in the AI and he does it,” said the former Vision Fund Exec.