Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank Group, is reportedly seeking $100 billion to launch a new venture that would compete with Nvidia in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. The project, code-named Izanagi, would collaborate with Arm, the chip design company that SoftBank spun out as a public company last year, retaining about 90% ownership.
AI chips are specialized processors that can perform complex calculations and tasks that require human-like intelligence, such as natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning. AI chips are in high demand as more applications and devices use AI to enhance their functionality and performance. Nvidia, the leading maker of graphics processing units (GPUs), is currently the dominant player in the AI chip market, with a market share of over 80%.
However, Son believes that there is room for more innovation and competition in the AI chip industry, and he is not the only one. Sam Altman, the former president of Y Combinator and the current CEO of OpenAI, is also reportedly in talks with investors in the United Arab Emirates to raise up to $7 trillion for a new AI chip project. OpenAI, a research lab co-founded by Elon Musk, is one of the largest consumers of AI chips, as it develops and operates large-scale language models such as GPT-3 and Codex.
Son plans to raise the $100 billion for his AI chip venture from Middle East-based institutional investors, following a similar strategy that he used for his Vision Fund investment funds. The Vision Fund, which has invested in companies such as Uber, WeWork, and ByteDance, suffered a huge loss in 2023 due to the pandemic and the collapse of some of its portfolio companies. Since then, Son has been selling off parts of his stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that has been his most profitable investment, to fund his new focus on AI.
Arm, which SoftBank acquired in 2016 for $32 billion, is expected to play a key role in Son’s AI chip venture. Arm is the world’s leading designer of chips for smartphones, tablets, and other devices, and its customers include Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Huawei. Arm also designs chips for AI applications, such as its Ethos and Project Trillium platforms. However, Arm’s future is uncertain, as Nvidia agreed to buy the company from SoftBank for $40 billion in 2020, but the deal is facing regulatory hurdles and opposition from some of Arm’s customers and competitors.
Son’s AI chip venture is still in its early stages, and the details of its technology, timeline, and partners are not yet clear. However, Son has a reputation for being a visionary and a risk-taker, and he has expressed his ambition to make SoftBank the leader of the AI revolution. Whether his new project will succeed or fail remains to be seen, but it is likely to have a significant impact on the AI chip industry and the AI ecosystem as a whole.
However, his ambitious plans have not always paid off. His $100 billion investment fund, the SoftBank Vision Fund, which was launched in 2017 to back promising tech startups, suffered a huge loss in 2020 due to the pandemic and the collapse of some of its portfolio companies, such as WeWork. As a result, Son had to sell off parts of his stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that has been his most profitable investment, to fund his new focus on AI.
Son’s latest project, code-named Izanagi, is a new venture that aims to compete with Nvidia, the dominant player in the AI chip market. Son is seeking as much as $100 billion to bankroll the project, which would collaborate with Arm, the chip design company that SoftBank owns. AI chips are specialized processors that can perform complex calculations and tasks that require human-like intelligence, such as natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning. AI chips are in high demand as more applications and devices use AI to enhance their functionality and performance.
Son named the project after Izanagi, the Japanese god of creation and life, partly because it includes the initials for artificial general intelligence. Son has long predicted the rise of AGI, and has invested heavily in trying to bring it about. He has also introduced the idea of “Artificial Super Intelligence”, which he claims will be realised in 20 years and will surpass human intelligence by a factor of 10,000.