SoftBank on the attack as AI gathers steam, Masayoshi Son says

IPO of company's chip design unit Arm looks promising, with a listing possibly raising up to $10 billion

Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank. The company is set to end years of relative dormancy in start-up investments. Bloomberg

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son declared the world’s largest tech investment firm will go on the offensive soon, ending years of relative dormancy in start-up investments.

That’s welcome news for the start-up ecosystem, where even the valuations of profitable firms are crumbling as higher interest rates sap liquidity and spur caution among venture capital funds.

Mr Son spoke at length about his excitement about AI’s potential at the conglomerate’s annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday.

Before 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 Mr Son said he would focus on listing chip design unit Arm.

Thanks to its long hibernation, SoftBank now has enough cash on hand to invest again, Mr Son said.

Arm is at the beginning of an “explosive” period of growth, he said. He’s spent the last few years doubling the number of the unit’s engineers, he added.

“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.”

SoftBank’s shares, which rose as much as 4.1 per cent before the meeting began, pared some of their gains after Mr Son’s comments.

Still, the stock has gained more than 30 per cent in the quarter that ended on June 30, heading for their best quarterly performance in three years.

An early champion of investing in artificial intelligence, Mr Son told shareholders at Japanese telecom unit SoftBank Corp the day before about how the growing public awareness about its potential made him happy.

SoftBank has poured billions of dollars into hundreds of companies and some of those bets will bear fruit soon, Mr 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.

Arm is seeking to raise as much as $10 billion, Bloomberg News reported, and brokerages are revising up their SoftBank stock price targets.