Japanese billionaire again raises $100bn to buy companies and rebuild them with AI
Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son has conceived yet another $100bn investment bet. The SoftBank founder is again seeking money from the wealthiest investors in the Gulf — but now he wants not just to invest in technology startups, but to buy entire companies and rebuild their operations using artificial intelligence (AI) and robots.
According to the Financial Times, Son is discussing creating a new fund of up to $100bn with potential investors in Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates.
Negotiations are at an early stage. There is neither a final list of investors nor a guarantee that the full $100bn will actually be raised.
What Son plans to do with the companies he buys
The most unusual part of the plan is how the money is intended to be used.
The new fund should not just buy stakes in promising AI developers. SoftBank is considering acquiring companies outright or gaining substantial control over them, and then introducing artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics into their businesses.
Essentially, Son wants to test the idea on a much larger scale: whether existing enterprises can be taken and their efficiency dramatically increased through new technologies.
A prominent role in this strategy is to be played by SoftBank Roze, the robotics arm that works on technologies for so-called physical AI — systems capable not only of processing information but also of interacting with the real world.
If the plan is realized, the new fund will differ markedly from ordinary venture capital. Its bet is not on guessing the next successful technology company, but on changing acquired businesses itself.
Why even SoftBank needed $100bn from others
Son's ambitions in artificial intelligence have become so large that financing them solely through SoftBank itself is becoming increasingly difficult.
The company has become one of the largest investors in OpenAI. According to the Financial Times, its total investment in the ChatGPT developer has reached about $65bn.
At the same time, SoftBank is investing in other parts of the future AI infrastructure — from processors and data centers to energy and robotics.
As a result, the new fund gives Son the ability to continue large-scale expansion without shifting all the financial risk directly onto SoftBank's balance sheet.
And this approach is not new for him.
Almost ten years ago he already came to the Gulf for huge money
In 2016–2017, Son promoted a similar-scale idea — the SoftBank Vision Fund, which was to become the world's largest technology investment fund.
The fund's first major round in 2017 brought in more than $93bn in investor commitments against a target size of about $100bn.
A key partner was the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), which initially considered investing up to $45bn. The Abu Dhabi investment fund Mubadala also joined the project, and other participants included Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn, and Sharp.
For Son, this became a way to manage investments of a completely different scale than SoftBank's own resources allowed.
Now he is essentially trying to return to the same formula: a grand technology idea plus tens of billions of dollars of external capital from Gulf countries.
But this time, artificial intelligence is at the center of the strategy.
The previous bet brought not only success
The history of the Vision Fund explains why the new $100bn project simultaneously attracts attention and raises questions.
The first fund allowed SoftBank to make huge bets on technology companies around the world. Some investments brought large profits, but others resulted in painful losses.
The period of falling technology company valuations in 2022 was especially hard.
According to SoftBank's own data, in the fiscal year ending March 2023, the Vision Fund investment unit recorded a loss of about 5.32 trillion yen.
The company sharply cut new investments and shifted from aggressive expansion to balance sheet protection. Later, the funds' results began to recover, but that period showed the downside of Son's strategy: enormous scale can multiply not only profits but also losses.
Why Son is heading to the Gulf again
Over the years, Gulf states have become even more important players in the global technology market.
The sovereign funds of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hold hundreds of billions of dollars and actively invest them in new industries, trying to reduce their economies' dependence on oil.
Artificial intelligence has become one of the main directions of this strategy. The region funds data centers, semiconductor manufacturing and supply, energy infrastructure, and its own technology companies.
For Son, this means a rare combination of two factors: access to enormous volumes of capital and investors who are themselves interested in the accelerated development of AI.
The $100bn remains a plan for now
Despite the magnitude of the figure, the new fund has not yet been created.
The Financial Times reports negotiations to raise up to $100bn, but potential partners have not yet announced concrete commitments. The final size of the structure may be smaller than the original design, or the project may change significantly.
That is why the current story speaks above all about the scale of Masayoshi Son's ambitions.
Almost ten years ago, he already convinced the largest Gulf funds to give him tens of billions of dollars for a technological revolution. Now Son is trying to do it again — with an even more specific idea: buying real companies and transforming their business with the help of artificial intelligence and robots.
Based on: Financial Times, SoftBank Vision Fund, SoftBank Group.
