SoftBank unveils investment fund

TOKYO: Japan’s SoftBank Group said on Friday it would partner with tech firms including Apple and Microsoft in a new $108-billion investment fund to accelerate the “AI revolution”.

The new fund is the long-mooted successor to its mammoth Vision Fund, which has taken stakes in leading tech start-ups from Uber to WeWork.

SoftBank Group itself will plough $38 billion into the new fund, which will also include investments from Apple, Microsoft, Foxconn, a range of Japanese banks, Standard Chartered, and the National Bank of Kazakstan.

In a statement, SoftBank Group said Vision Fund 2 would “facilitate the continued acceleration of the AI (artificial intelligence) revolution through investment in market-leading, tech-enabled growth companies”.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that SoftBank executives brought on board Microsoft with promises to encourage the fund’s roughly 75 companies to shift to the tech firm’s cloud platform.

Originally a software giant, SoftBank has increasingly become an investment firm through its first Vision Fund, which was largely backed by Saudi Arabia.

The announcement of Vision Fund 2 made no mention of Saudi Arabia among the investors, though reports ahead of the announcement suggested Riyadh was in negotiations to put money into the fund.