Japanese technology investment group SoftBank (stock code: 9984.T) aims to become the world's leading platform in the field of "artificial super intelligence" (ASI) within the next 10 years. This information was shared by CEO Masayoshi Son himself at the annual shareholders meeting held on Friday.
Billionaire Masayoshi Son declared: "We want to become the organizer and leader of the entire industry in the artificial super intelligence era". Previously, he described ASI as an artificial intelligence level capable of surpassing human capabilities 10,000 times.
After a cautious period due to past investment losses, SoftBank is returning to the aggressive investment strategy that made Son famous - exemplified by the early investment in Alibaba. However, this strategy also previously caused significant damage to the group, such as the massive investment in the office-sharing company WeWork - a heavily failed venture.
In 2025, SoftBank has made several major AI-related deals, notably acquiring the American chip design company Ampere for $6.5 billion, and committing to finance up to $40 billion for OpenAI - the entity behind ChatGPT's development. Masayoshi Son revealed that the total investment value signed with OpenAI has reached $32 billion since the first investment in autumn 2024. He also expressed regret for not investing earlier and hopes OpenAI will go public soon.
"I am betting everything on OpenAI," Son affirmed.
Previously, SoftBank had owned about 5% of Nvidia's shares - currently dominating the global AI chip market - but sold all shares in 2019, before the AI wave exploded in late 2022 thanks to ChatGPT. Nvidia has now become one of the world's largest market capitalization companies.
Masayoshi Son's massive spending marks a return after years of belt-tightening, when the value of numerous technology startups invested through the Vision Fund plummeted since 2022.
The group's fate began to improve when SoftBank raised about $5 billion by listing the chip design company Arm in the US in September 2023. Since then, Arm's shares have continuously increased, helping to increase SoftBank's assets and creating conditions to use as collateral to borrow additional Capital for new investment ventures
