Softbank Hopes To Repeat Alibaba’s Success With It’s AI Investments

It was in 2000 when Softbank’s chairman, Masayoshi Son, saw fire in the eyes of Jack Ma and decided to back Ma’s one year old startup, Alibaba, with a $20 million investment. Fast-forward 23 years later, Alibaba became one of Son’s most profitable investments realizing over $72 billion in gains, and constituted over 50% of Softbank’s overall portfolio valuation.

With artificial intelligence now on the horizon, Chairman Son is looking to repeat the same success he had with Alibaba with AI. He started doing this through his $32 billion acquisition of ARM, a British chip designer, and the setting up of Vision Funds, which has invested in AI-related companies such as Uber, ByteDance, Nvidia, and is aggressively investing in any AI-related startups. Hopefully, Softbank will realize the same Alibaba’s ecommerce success it had with its AI investments.