Since the time he almost went broke after the dot.bomb bubble burst (he had briefly been the richest person in the world) I've come to realize this guy isn't some great visionary/grand strategist; he's just leveraged beta. Making big bets, all geared up, on whatever is at the head of the passing parade.
That said, he owns 90% of ARM Holdings and I don't.
Bastard.
From Bloomberg, February 16:
- SoftBank has $41 billion cash pile and finances helped by Arm
- Undertaking code-named Izanagi after Japanese god of creation
SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son is seeking as much as $100 billion to bankroll a chip venture to compete with Nvidia Corp. and supply semiconductors essential for AI, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Code-named Izanagi, the project marks the billionaire’s next big endeavor as SoftBank sharply curtails startup investments. Son envisions creating a company that can complement chip design unit Arm Holdings Plc and allow the billionaire to build an AI chip powerhouse, said the people, who requested anonymity because the discussions remain private. In one scenario being considered, SoftBank would provide $30 billion, with $70 billion possibly coming from institutions in the Middle East, one of the people said.
If he succeeds, the chip project will mark one of the largest investments in the AI arena since the advent of ChatGPT, dwarfing Microsoft Corp.’s recent bet on OpenAI of more than $10 billion. Son named the project after Izanagi, the Japanese god of creation and life, partly because it includes the initials for artificial general intelligence, the people said. Son has for years foretold the coming of AGI in his presentations, saying that a world filled with machines that are smarter than humans will be safer, healthier and happier.
Read More: AI Companies Are Obsessed with AGI. No One Can Agree What It Is
Details of how the project will be funded or where the money will be spent have yet to be sorted out, and the project may evolve further, the people said. Son is continually toying with multiple investment ideas and strategies to strengthen Arm’s reach into the AI market and is always exploring different types of next-generation chips, they said. It’s unclear which company or companies will play a central role in developing the technology needed to challenge Nvidia, by far the leader in high-end AI accelerators.
Representatives of SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.
After a series of brutal setbacks in his startup investments, Son is focusing his efforts on Arm. The entrepreneur sees an opportunity to create a monster of a company in the same league as the Magnificent Seven stocks, the people said. SoftBank had ¥6.2 trillion ($41 billion) in cash and cash equivalents as of Dec. 31, thanks to a rebound in global equity markets. Its balance sheet got a boost from a windfall in T-Mobile US Inc. shares, worth almost $8 billion, as well as from the company’s 90% stake in Arm, which added roughly $50 billion in market value over the past week alone....
....MUCH MORE
My favorite Son quote was his advice to Adam Neumann of WeWork (Softbank's investment in WeWork eventually totaled $16 billion):
“I told Adam not to be proud that WeWork was growing organically without a large sales force or spending big marketing dollars,” Softbank boss Masayoshi Son told Forbes after Softbank’s first investment in 2017. “Make it ten times bigger than your original plan. If you think in that manner, the valuation is cheap.” He added, “It can be worth a few hundred billion dollars.”
That may be some of the worst career advice ever. But probably not the worst:
an internship at the white house will be amazing on your resume. 😳
— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) July 14, 2019
See also:
November 2019
SoftBank’s problems aren’t so surprising if you understand this one thing about the company
Throughout the manic phase of SoftBank and the Vision fund there was
almost no mention of the fact that at the start of this century
Masayoshi Son was the richest person in the world:
"But Son’s fairytale didn’t last long. After the dot-com bubble burst, his company Softbank’s shares plunged 75 percent in two months and was 93 percent lower by the end of 2000.We had a couple posts around the time of the above that touched on the craziness but not the past history:
The business almost went bankrupt and Son ended up losing USD 70 billion, the highest ever recorded financial loss for a person in history."
—MoneyControl, October 13, 2017
SoftBank In Talks To Acquire U.S. Treasury
Sprint, T-Mobile Plunge: SoftBank Calling Off Merger, Will Use Cash to Buy Canada
See also semi-variance, after the jump....
