SoftBank founder Son makes his biggest bet by staking the future on AI
The son of Masayoshi, the President and General Manager of Softbank Group Corp., speaks at Softbank world event in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The son of Masayoshi still makes the biggest bet: Brain Child Softbank will be the center of a revolution directed by artificial intelligence.
The son says he’ll be here in 10 years, 10,000 times smarter than people. This is a brave call – but perhaps not surprising. He made a career from big games; In particular, there was an investment of $ 20 million in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba In 2000, he made billions for Softbank.
Now, the billionaire hopes to reproduce this success with a series of investments and acquisitions that will put Softbank at the center of a fundamental technological change in AI companies.
According to two former rulers in Softbank, although the son is clear about his last year’s vision, his thought comes before his last rise.
Alok Sama, a former financial chief in SoftBank until 2019, said, “I remember inviting me to dinner for the first time and sitting on a glass of wine, he began to talk to me about singularity
Softbank’s big AI games
AI looks personal for the son.
Last year, “What purpose was Softbank established? Table son was born for what purpose? It may sound strange, but I think I was born to realize ASI.” He said.
This may be a way to put the last two at the center of the AI story.
In March, Softbank also announced its plans to purchase another chip designer Ampere Computing for $ 6.5 billion.
ChatGPT manufacturer Openai, another election frame for Softbank, the Japanese giant recently planned investments in the company will reach approximately 4.8 trillion Japanese yen ($ 32.7 billion).
Softbank also invested in other AI -related companies during its portfolio.
Neil Shah told CNBC, “Softbank’s AI strategy is comprehensive, from basic researchers, the latest cloud services and robotics to the latest cloud services and latest applications,” CNBC, the founding partner in contrast research.
“The vision of Mr. Son is to create a powerful AI ecosystem designed to maximize the long -term value for our shareholders, so that the vision of Mr Son is in harmony and deeply for our shareholders.”
Softbank’s first vision fund was founded since 2017.
In his statement to CNBC, there is a common theme behind Softbank’s investments directly to artificial intelligence companies from the son – that is, these companies need to use advanced intelligence to make their customers happy more competitive, successful and happy. They could only comment on anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.
It started with brain computers and robots
In 2010, Softbank launched the “Softbank’s next 30 -year vision” and spoke about “brain computers” during the last presentation. He described these computers as systems that could finally learn and program.
And then the robots came. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia and Tesla Patron Elon Musk is now talking about robotics as a key application of AI – but the son was thinking About it more than ten years ago.
In 2012, Softbank received a majority stake at a French company called Aldebaran. Two years later, two companies launched a humanoid robot called Pepper. invoiced “The world’s first personal robot that can read emotions”.
Later my son in question: “In 30 years, the robots will be one of the basic enterprises in making profits for the Softbank group.”
Softbank’s bet on Pepper finally swams for the company. Softbank cut He stopped producing work in the robotic unit and pepper in 2020. In 2022, the German company United Robotics Group agreed to buy Aldebaran from Softbank.
However, his son’s very early interest in robots underlined his curiosity for the future AI applications.
“He was very much, and he was thinking about it in an obsessive way.
In the background, the son cooked something bigger: a technology fund that will make waves in the investment world. In 2017, he founded the Vision Fund with a huge $ 100 billion capital.
Softbank has invested aggressively in companies around the world with some of the biggest bets of driving players. Uber And the Chinese company didi.
However, investments in Chinese technology companies and some bad bets to companies such as Weworks gave a feeling for the vision fund because it collected billions of dollars until 2023.
Vision but bad timing
The market questioned some of the investments made by his son in companies such as Uber and Didi, and his investments, which were an indefinite unit economy that burned with cash money at that time.
However, according to the former partner of Softbank Vision Fund, even these investments spoke with Son’s view.
“At that time, the first arrival of AI would be self -driving cars.” He said.
Again, this can be seen as an example of being too early. Uber just created a driverless car unit to sell. Instead, the company focused on other self -going automobile companies to bring them to the Uber platform. Even now, driverless cars are not common on the roads, but there are commercial services such as Waymo’s.
Softbank still has investments in driverless automobile companies, for example British starting way.
The timing was not clearly with his son. After the record losses in the Vision Fund in 2022, the end declared that Softbank would move into “defense” mode and will significantly reduce investments and be more cautious. Meanwhile, companies like Openai began to gain steam, but before the launch of Chatgpt, who would still put the company on the map.
“When these companies came to the top of 2021, 2022, the table would be in a perfect place, but he used all his ammunition in other companies.” He said.
He continued: “When they reached 22, 22, the vision fund had invested in five or six hundred different companies and was not in a position to invest in AI and missed it.”
Your son himself said that Softbank wanted to invest in Openai at an early date like 2019, but Microsoft This key became investor. Until 2025, the Vision Fund, which is currently two, has a portfolio full of AI -oriented companies.
However, this period was difficult for investors on the board of directors. Covid-19 pandemi, exploding inflation and rising odds, years of loose monetary policy and a technology bull work after the board of directors hit public and private markets throughout the board.
A person familiar with the company said that Softbank has not seen this time as an opportunity to invest this time to invest in AI.
Instead, the company believes that it is still too early in the AI investment cycle.
Risk and reward
AI technology moves quickly to models that support popular applications from the software running software.
In order to reach artificial general intelligence (AGI), technology giants in the US and China are struggling to produce AI models with a term that expands AI, which is a term with different definitions depending on whom you speak to. Billions of dollars are high, while the investment is high, the risk is high and the awards may be even higher.
However, the deterioration cannot come out of any place.
This year, the Chinese company Deepseek made waves after publishing the so -called reasoning model. The US seemed to be developed cheaper than its competitors. Despite all export restrictions for advanced technology, a Chinese company shook the global financial markets that bets that the US is an ineffective artificial intelligence institution.
Although the markets have recovered since then, the potential of surprise progress in technology at such an early stage in AI continues to be a major risk like Softbank.
“As in most technology investments, the main challenging technologies of Morningstar Equality Analyst is to invest in technologies. Most of the investments made by Softbank are in existing leaders, but AI is still relatively relatively in infancy, so that other competitors are still able to return from anywhere, Mor said Morningstar.
Nevertheless, the son made it clear that he wanted to adjust Softbank with DNA. Survive and to develop 300 yearsAccording to the company’s website.
This may be a way to explain the great risks of his son and certain themes and companies – and the values he will be willing to pay.
“He (son) made some mistakes, but he goes to the same Driection, that is, he wants to make sure he’s a real player in AI and he’s doing it.” He said.
